


Corked

by homesickblues



Series: the wine and dine 'verse [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chef AU, Eventual angst with a happy ending, M/M, Sommelier AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/pseuds/homesickblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bordeaux, so like Paris and yet so unlike any other place in the world in its narrow streets and soft-cornered architecture, casts romantic hues against his window, draping long, finger-like shadows through the length of his flat.</p><p>He traces them with hooded eyes and thinks about impossible things: impossible people, impossible foods, impossible chefs and the impossible pleasure they get out of torturing innocent sommeliers.</p><p>***</p><p>The one where Arthur's the new sommelier at a world-class French restaurant and Eames is the famous chef who makes Arthur's life impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> som·me·lier -- \ˌsə-məl-ˈyā\
> 
> French, _n._
> 
> A restaurant employee who orders and maintains the wines sold in the restaurant and usually has extensive knowledge about wine and food pairings.
> 
> (Note to everyone wary of WIPs: I have an ending to this in my mind. I promise you, I will finish it, with (most likely) weekly updates.)
> 
>  
> 
> **EDIT (1-2-2017): this work is completed!!!**

Arthur’s worked hard for this.

Not everyone thinks so – ‘ _Tasting? You think that’s hard work?’_ his father had said out on their family vineyard – but that’s never really bothered him. He _knows_ he’s worked hard for this. Years and years and _years_ of training, of testing, of sipping, of smelling, of swishing, of spitting, of tears, of headaches, of dejection and all for _this_.

He glances around the cool cellar as he stands at the gaping arched door, taking in the smell of mold and musty stone and rotting wood. The rows and rows of ancient bottles glisten underneath thick layers of dust, and he resists the urge to walk forward and run his fingers over all of them, just to be close to them.

 _The biggest collection of rare label, old vintage wines in the world_ , they’d told him after he’d gotten this job: sommelier at the newly rebooted fine-dining restaurant, Limbo. The owner, an ecstatic young entrepreneur named Dominic Cobb who’d just married into one of the most ancient wine-preserving families in Bordeaux conveniently _after_ his wife’s father had retired and entrusted all of his collection to the newlyweds, was bouncing up on his heels as he gushed about all of it, his eyes like two blue flares. Arthur would have been completely turned off of this kind of behavior had this restaurant not had the Michelin stars to back it all up. _Two_ , to be exact. Dom and his utterly charming, quick-witted French wife Mal had worked tirelessly over the past few years to give the restaurant a fresh start, a fresh menu, and a fresh image. People came from all over the world just to spend triple digit figures on these bottles, and the food.

The food’s good too, he supposes as his eyes flicker over the wine cellar ( _his_ wine cellar), but he doesn’t care too much about that. He’s never had as much of a taste for anything that isn’t fermented and made of grapes, but then again he’s spent many years eating the finest food the world has to offer, so maybe he’s just used to it. As long as the food is decent enough, it can act as a good accompaniment to the wine. And he can match _anything_ to a good wine. (He once paired a good crisp chardonnay with buttery popcorn and it was so good that his ex-boyfriend almost didn’t leave him for some guy with a pencil-pushing job, full dental, a 401k, and a dog. Almost.)

The food _has_ to be good, however. It’s the reason the establishment earned two stars. The published reasoning behind it had said that the food was well-worthy of a three-star rating, but the wine pairings were lacking a certain… pizazz.

Enter Arthur.

He’s worked hard for this, and not everyone can do it. They hired him because he’s, quite simply, the best, and his talent was being wasted away in trendy Manhattan bistros where they serve food in _fucking_ pipets, for chrissake. Dom had found his blog, the one where he was embarrassingly arguing with idiots about the value of oak-aided fermentation with certain types of red wine, then proceeded to do some sniffing around about his reputation in the American restaurant scene, and had bought him away immediately. Set him up with his _own_ 401k, dental, and a hefty salary. He’s grateful, but he’s _earned_ this.

He just never estimated that it would be this much of a challenge.

One week in, he had already had a night where he tasted the evening’s special – a complexly layered pâté with truffle shavings and black garlic and confit-crusted croutons – and he struggled to find a decent match for it. There was so much _to_ it, so many complex flavors in the dish itself that the idea of trying to match one of the beautiful wines in the cellar, each with their own complex layers and twists and traits, seemed unfair. The food should be _simple_. This is why he came to France: to get away from all the pretentious hipster bullshit and flee to somewhere where people valued straightforward, rich flavors.

(Side note: it was delicious. But it might as well have been a mouthful of dirt how Arthur felt about it at the end of the night. He’d chosen a 1967 bone-dry sauvignon blanc that ended up going over delightfully, but he still tossed and turned over it all of that night, dreaming of _what if it had been too dry for how savory the dish was?_ )

The three weeks that followed, things got worse. More complex dishes came out of the kitchen, using things he’d never even _heard_ of let alone _tasted._ His first reaction is always to feel like a failure. Like his years of training and practicing were for naught. Like his father was right, and “tasting” couldn’t actually be a profession that put food on the table and paid the bills. But then it always turns into a defiant passion to find _something_ … and he always does. He takes it as a challenge… a stressful, completely unnecessary challenge, but a challenge none-the-less.

There is one bizarre and glaring fact that bothers him to no end, however: he’s never met the chef. He’s never been inside the kitchen. In all of his previous experience working at restaurants, the head chef would be out in the main room barking suggestions to him every single night, trying to override his own ideas of what would pair. Sometimes he wouldn’t even get to taste the changes to the menu on any given night because the chef would deem their explanation of everything worthy enough. Here, it's different. Every day before dinner, the nightly special is brought out to him by the sous-chef when he enters the restaurant with a scrawled note next to it saying what it is as well as something asinine like ‘ _do tell me if it’s a bit heavy on the beurre blanc, darling_ ’ or ‘ _let me know if you crack a tooth on this bruschetta and I’ll string the bloke in charge of the grill up by his toes.’_ Never a single word from the chef about what he thinks the pairing should be… not even a single suggestion.

 _Darling…?_ He’d think as he tosses the note in the trash like every night, focusing on the flavor profile in front of him. He takes it as some form of intimidation. And also: _damn, this is fucking good. What kind of witchcraft is this, anyway?_ One night in his fifth week he was given a fillet mignon with a truffle crème sauce and he actually _moaned_. Involuntarily, of course. Food had never had this effect on him before. Even if it consistently proved to be a challenge to pair.

This night’s different, he tells himself as he pushes himself away from the cool stone wall and steps forward through the rows and rows of rare vintages, beautiful bottles and large barrels. _Tonight_ , he’s starting a new leaf. He’s learned all of this chef’s tricks, and he’s prepared.

It’s early; earlier than he normally shows up to work by a few hours. The cellar’s humid, meaning the sun is high in the sky above them and warming the ground. He isn’t suited up like he’d normally be yet; he’s clad in old black jeans and a ratty Giants shirt, his hair imperfectly gelled as it was too fluffy after his shower, a thick dark lock of it falling haphazardly into his line of vision.

Notebook in hand, he steps cautiously through all of the rows, glancing down at the extensive notes he has on every single bottle in the place: what the harvest and weather were like the year of that vintage, past notes from somms who’d tasted it in the past, what kind of barrel it was fermented and aged in, what kinds of plants or livestock were kept nearby while the grapes were growing… etc.

He thinks of his childhood. He thinks of early mornings and swelteringly hot sunny days; skimming fingers over vines and sneaking grapes into his mouth whenever his mother had her back turned to inspect the new harvest. He thinks of his very first tastes of wine, barely tall enough to reach up onto the kitchen table and take the glass offered to him by his father. ‘ _Vines had a rough year_ ,’ his father had told him as he eyed him softly and curiously; his protégé tasting his first vintage, the first step in a life-long journey of Arthur taking over the winery, something that would never happen. As Arthur took his first sip, his doughy brown eyes widening as the tarte taste had covered his tongue and made his lips pucker, his father had chuckled and said, ‘ _The best wines come from grapes that struggle. Remember that when you start harvesting your own grapes. Don’t baby them, and if it’s a hard year, always keep in mind that your hard work will pay off._ ’ That was long before he became the family disappointment for liking wine _too_ much. For wanting to drink it instead of struggle to grow it year after year for the rest of his life.

He meticulously reads everything, contemplates flavor matches, and adds even more scribbled notes under and in the margins of the ones he already has. He’s crouched down in front of a 1984 Syrah when he hears the old spruce door creak open.

There’s a pause while Arthur waits for whoever it is to say something, and seemingly nothing moves except for the dust motes shimmering around him from the small high window. Dom, he expects, checking in on him to make sure he isn’t stealing any of his bottles. Mal, possibly, checking in on her father’s collection. Maybe even Ariadne, coming to fetch him for an early preview of tonight’s menu changes. Eventually, he hears a throaty voice in a British accent that most certainly _isn’t_ Dom’s. Or Mal’s. Or Ariadne’s.

“So you’re the bloke who’s good with his tongue,” the voice says, and and Arthur feels himself recoil like a startled snake being disturbed in its habitat. He stands abruptly, the words ‘ _excuse you?’_ caught between his parted lips, when he’s met with the sight of a young, surly, attractive man leaning casually with crossed arms against the curve of the arched doorway. He’s dressed in a light red sweater with the sleeves rolled up, showing off the many tattoos Arthur can spy on his forearms that peak out above the collar of the sweater as well, implying that they go all the way up. He’s wearing a casual smirk on his lips as he eyes Arthur with some sort of vague mirth. Arthur’s blood runs cold and his jaw clenches.

“I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” he says slowly, making it sound more like a ‘fuck you’ than a polite greeting, but there’s a slight waver to it that he doesn’t intend to come out. The man’s smirk widens and he steps forward.

“Oddly not yet, I’m well aware. Been a rather busy first few weeks of the season, hasn’t it? Haven’t had much time to step out of the kitchen and track you down when you’re actually around.” The man kicks away from the doorframe and approaches him, his walk more akin to a slouch than a stride. He holds out his hand and Arthur simply stares at it.

“Cedric Eames,” the man says with sudden warmth and Arthur almost stumbles back into a stack of _very_ expensive wine.

 _No_ , he thinks outright _, this idiot’s the man who’s been putting out all this fancy impossible food?_

Cedric Eames is famous. That may be an understatement. He’s a legend, really. Known all around the world for his fusion cuisine and forcing people out of their comfort zones to try new things and pay ridiculous amounts for it. Arthur’d never bothered to really look him up beyond the cursory knowledge overhead from his mother watching the cooking channel… maybe foolishly, as he didn’t much care who was running the kitchen as long as they were good and the restaurant owned good labels and vintages. Arthur’s sister had raved and _raved_ about the restaurant of his she went to when he was working in New York. He’d known it was Eames in the kitchen at Limbo, but he’d never really cared enough about his fame or glory to investigate too much. After one cursory google search without learning so much as a birthdate or seeing a picture, he’d read three reviews on various restaurants Eames had worked at and deemed him acceptable to work with.

“You run a… tight kitchen,” Arthur stutters because _what the hell else do I say?_ “I’m Arthur Cohen.”

“Yes, I know who you are perfectly well, love. Dom hasn’t been able to stop rambling about you since he hired you. You’re quite elusive, you know. I’ve been trying to catch you for weeks but every time you’re around I’m running my kitchen. I’ve only gotten glimpses of you.”

 ** _I’m_** _quite elusive?_ Arthur grits his teeth.

“We could’ve met if you came out to give me the nightly special yourself.” Arthur frowns. Every night, it’s usually Ariadne the sous-chef that brings him the special. She’s nice and always has a keen sense of humor that shockingly appeals to Arthur (possibly because they are both from America and can commiserate), but it’s never been the head chef. Arthur just thought he was anti-social. The great Eames holed up in his kitchen, honing in on his _craft_.

“Possibly, but I’ve shifted those duties. I’m usually busy gathering ingredients and makings sure everyone has their shit together. I run a tight ship… like you said.” Eames smiles and his eyes twinkle a bit with it, even in the dimness of the cellar. Arthur swallows.

He stays silent for a moment, debating with himself whether or not to say anything. This is, after all, the man that’s caused him so much hell. So many sleepless nights. He clears his throat.

“You have an… _interesting_ taste in food,” he mutters, crossing his arms. “I’ve found it hard to pair some of your foods with wine… there are flavor profiles I’ve never come across before.”

Eames doesn’t seem to take it as an insult… or if he does, he doesn’t show it. He merely smiles easily and shrugs.

“There’s a reason people travel here for the food, love. If it was something they could get just _anywhere_ , they wouldn’t have to come out to the middle of bloody fuck nowhere, France… would they?” He regards Arthur quietly and Arthur feels himself shrink a bit. But Eames simply smiles wider. “Don’t worry. I think with my food and your wine, we could become legends together, yeah?”

 _Oh no_ , Arthur thinks, _he isn’t going to let up on me. This is all a test_.

“Great,” he replies, looking down at his feet because he doesn’t know where else to look and the cellar walls feel like they’re closing in a bit. His head snaps back up when Eames takes a bold step toward him.

“Great,” Eames echoes with a wink. There’s another silence between them, but this time Eames breaches it, stepping backward to lean against the worn stone next to the archway. “So you’re from New York?”

“No,” Arthur squares his shoulders and finds a stone pillar to lean against, trying to seem casual. “I’m from Sonoma. It’s in California…”

“Yes, yes, a few mates of mine and I flew there during chef school and got properly pissed flittering from vineyard to vineyard all day. Lovely place, from what I can remember.”

Arthur thinks back to the fleeting glimpses he got of the main floor of his father’s vineyard; all of the drunk tourists paying exorbitant amounts just to sip and spit before paying even more to buy whole bottles, whole cases. He wonders if Eames passed through while he was there… probably not. He reckons Eames is somewhere around thirty, meaning around the time he was in chef school, Arthur would have already been in New York trying to make a name for himself. “It’s a nice place. My family owns a winery.”

“Ah, so that’s where you got your taste for it.”

Arthur nods because _yes_ and _no,_ but he really doesn’t want to go into that right now; the complicated politics of his family and his feelings toward Californian wine, the explosive arguments he gets into with his dad every single time he tries to make contact nowadays. Especially not with a stranger. Especially not with a _famous_ stranger who likely has the power to get him fired whom he really doesn’t know if he can trust whatsoever.

“Well,” Eames says briskly, taking a few steps back toward him, his slouch turning into more of a relaxed slump of one shoulder, “I am very pleased to be working with you, Arthur. The somm before you… bloody tosser. Couldn’t tell a plum from a pineapple, let alone a pinot noir from a cabernet.” He walks until he’s right in front of Arthur, reaching up to give his shoulder a squeeze before turning and slinking back to the entrance, hands tucked casually in pockets.

“Thanks,” Arthur says after him, feeling like he just stared down a magician and missed some sleight of hand. “I’m glad to be here.”

Eames turns and gives him a surprisingly bright toothy grin, and Arthur notices that he has imperfect teeth that end up making his face somehow even _more_ interesting. Without another word, Eames vanishes up the stairs, leaving Arthur to look down at the wine bottles below him unseeingly with a steady panic rising up inside of him. Not panic about the challenges ahead, however, but rather the prospect that this man… this very important chef whom he’d never met before actually somehow _believes_ in him and wants him to succeed… wants them to succeed _together_.

That afternoon, just as the sun begins to make its descent into the west, Ariadne brings out a lemon-seared lamb shank with rosemary potatoes and a crème anglaise sauce and Arthur wants to scream because _lamb_ : okay, so red wine with smoky undertones to cut through the gaminess but then _lemon and crème_ scream white wine or rosé: Fresh, acidic, light, fruity… Generally lemon does go with lamb, but only hints of it. This lamb is _fragrant_ with lemon. The note from Eames ( _‘hope you don’t find this too… ‘interesting’ ;)’)_ glares up at him as he takes bite after otherworldly bite, wondering what in the _hell_ he’s going to serve it with.

He takes a chance and serves the special that night with a light viognier (he can almost hear his old instructor screaming in his ear – _white wine with lamb? Are you fucking NUTS?)_ The guests look up at with confused, suspect eyes as he pours it, but as soon as they taste it with the food it seems to all makes sense to them. He loiters in the back corner by his wine station, actively avoiding Dom as he patrols the floor and asks everyone how they’re enjoying their meal. At one point he overhears someone ask if they can speak to the chef only to hear Dom’s polite response that ‘ _Mr. Eames is unfortunately too busy to take floor visits. He actually runs the kitchen, unlike so many celebrity chefs these days…’_ In the end, every single table leaves him a huge tip. As the last couple to leave – elderly, German – come up and tell him how wonderful their experience was, how pleasantly surprised they were with the wine, he happens to glance up at the door to the kitchen, catching a flash as it opens briefly of a wicked British smile as if to say, ‘ _see?’_

At around midnight he finally manages to sneak out of another post-dinner session of Dom’s enthusiastic appraisal and idle chat and drive back to his apartment in downtown Bordeaux. The streets are pleasingly empty this time of night, even on a weekend, and he wastes no time going above the speed limit with the thought of his air conditioning and silk sheets beckoning him. When he enters he finds it in the same slightly displeasing state he left it: boxes strewn everywhere, the walls blank and off-white, paintings still with their covers on set up against the walls he wants them to hang from, piles of wood and hardware scattered around where the IKEA furniture he purchased will soon stand once he finds time to put them together. The only things truly as they should be are his expensive sectional couch (which he paid a fortune to ship from New York instead of parting with it like any sane person would…) and his king-sized bed; both splurges he afforded himself when he got this shiny new job. He keeps telling himself he’ll find time to put the rest of his apartment together, put his life together, but when he isn’t at the restaurant he’s found his anxiety about the pairings has been too bad for him to want to do much of anything. _This week_ , he promises himself, _this week I’ll finish setting everything up._

He steps over the various pieces of his discombobulated life and makes his way into the kitchen, switching on the overhead light (one that _doesn’t_ buzz, he notes, like his old apartment in Manhattan had) and heading over to the small wine rack he has perched at one end of the kitchen counter, sliding a €8 bottle of a French red blend out of one of the little cubbies. He snatches the corkscrew he still has in his pocket out and uses it to expertly open the bottle. He sets it on the counter, allowing it to breathe, while he efficiently showers and pulls on a pair of boxers. He catches his reflection as he towel-tries his hair and he notes just how _different_ he is. He feels like the man he’s looking at is a casual acquaintance instead of the body he inhabits. When he was younger – Californian and wild – he used to have such deep smile lines in his face. Early-onset crowfeet, his mother used to joke. Accompanied by a head of wild black waves and deep-set dimples. Sun-kissed skin. Freckles. The man looking back at him now, however, fits any kind of sommelier stereotype one could ever muster. His smile lines have faded, and his dimples only make an appearance now with the widest of smiles. He’s pale, his freckles have vanished, and his eyes seem somehow less bright. He smooths back his wet hair to complete the look, heaving a sigh at himself.

When he returns to the kitchen, he pours himself a large glass and moves to sit on the couch, staring blankly at where his television still sits in its box, leaning against the wall opposite.

His mind wanders. He sips the wine – delicious and floral and rich… anyone that convinces themselves that cheap wine can’t be good wine is cheating themselves, he’ll argue it to his grave – and glances out at the dim city lights below him. Bordeaux, so like Paris and yet so unlike any other place in the world in its narrow streets and soft-cornered architecture, casts romantic hues against his window, draping long, finger-like shadows through the length of his flat.

He traces them with hooded eyes and thinks about impossible things: impossible people, impossible foods, impossible chefs and the impossible _pleasure_ they get out of torturing innocent sommeliers.

He also thinks about impossibly plush lips. Impossibly broad shoulders. Impossibly steely-grey eyes. _Shit,_ he thinks, _why does the bane of my goddamn existence also have to be the most gorgeous human I’ve ever laid eyes on?_ He can tell, now, why his sister raved so much. Maybe she’d even mentioned it, his looks, the _air_ of sex he exuded, but he did tend to put her on a sort of mute when she went off about things he had no interest in. Beth had a way of making everything sound like a veiled insult and Arthur, new to the world of being a sommelier, had tuned her out when she went on and on about other restaurants she’d been to, other wines she’d tasted. It was a fault of his, really.  

These thoughts he carefully sweeps away to the back of his mind, pointedly ignoring them. _No_ , he tells himself, _off-limits. You_ earned _this job_.

Wine. Wine is not impossible. He _knows_ wine. He won’t let anything convince him otherwise.

His floor-length light cotton drapes billow in the night breeze and he keeps his eyes trained on the ghostly outline of them until he slips into unconsciousness on his couch, barely remembering to set down the mostly-finished glass of wine down on the hardwood floor below him where his coffee table should be.

 

 

 

Three days (including a busy weekend) pass without another encounter with Eames.

He finds himself trying to catch glimpses into the kitchen whenever the door flaps open and a waiter runs out with arms full of gorgeous food, but he never sees the man he’s looking for. It frustrates him – there’s never any sort of mention of approval of the previous night’s wine choices… he has no idea whether or not Eames approves.

“Hey,” he catches Ariadne at the end of the third day as she leaves to go back to the kitchen after bringing out a gorgeous looking roast pheasant stuffed with truffles and fennel. “Has Eames said anything about… my wine choices? I mean, he must hear about it from the staff…”

“Uh, nope, haven’t heard him say anything about your wine choices.” She purses her lips and looks up at the ceiling, thinking. She smiles at something cryptically. “Don’t worry, Arthur. Chef usually doesn’t mention something unless he’s unhappy with it. ‘Why piss on a perfectly good tree’, he always says.”

Arthur bristles, but nods once, trying to make himself smile as she lets out a bark of laughter and walks back to the kitchen.

The next day, to his horror, he realizes that he begins to make himself more _available_ to Eames. He shows up early and mills around the cellars and the floor, chatting with staff or Mal if she’s visiting. Still, no sight of Eames. He realizes lamely that he could simply walk back into the kitchen and see him, but the thought nearly horrifies him into a coma of embarrassment. The dishes, possibly as a result or possibly for no good reason at all, get even harder to pair. One night he goes home and scrolls through the comments one of his instructors left on various assignments just to remind himself that _yes, I’m good at what I do._

On the sixth day, he feels a hand on his shoulder after closing as he was heading to where his car’s parked out back.

“Brilliant choice today.” He turns to find Eames smiling at him, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and the first few buttons of his chef’s jacket undone. His face is half-illuminated by the harsh flood light above them, making him look like some kind of Grecian sculpture hashed out of marble. Imperfect. Beautiful. He shivers.

“Thanks,” Arthur responds. “Did you get to try it?”

“Drained the last few drops from the bottle. Delicious. I’m more of a beer bloke, but it was delicious.”

Arthur, to his own horror, outwardly scowls. Eames’s face lights up in response as if Arthur’s disdain triggered some sort of Pavlovian joy inside of him.

“Glad you liked it,” Arthur manages to say, crossing his arms and forming his lips into a careful smile. “Still nearly impossible to pair with your food, but when life gives you lemons…”

“And lamb.” Eames winks.

“ _And lamb_ ,” Arthur agrees with a heaved sigh, glancing up at him with a half-smirk.

The door behind them slams open.

“Cedric Eames, you owe me _fifty euros,_ you son of a-” Ariadne stops dead in her tracks when she spots Arthur, the accusatory finger she’s pointing into Eames’s chest falling limply to her side. “Oh. _Oh_. Hi Arthur. Didn’t mean to interrupt!”

“I don’t mind.” Arthur feels one of his eyebrows arching on its own volition, biting back a smile.

Eames throws a dramatic arm around Ariadne, squeezing her against his side.

“Ari, my _pearl_ , is this because Yusuf didn’t come back to see you when he dropped off the seafood this morning?”

She keeps her eyes trained on Arthur, seemingly sizing him up to see whether or not he was worthy of this information, but her face falls into a relaxed, passive state once Eames speaks. She follows his lead like a baby duckling, apparently trusting that if Eames can speak freely around him, so can she.

“Yes, you lying asshole. He didn’t.”

“He was in a rush. Had to make a delivery in the city.”

“Don’t care, you still lose. Pay. Up.”

Arthur can’t help but snort as Eames groans dramatically, sighing like a nineteenth century maiden as he pulls his wallet out of his pocket and takes several bills out of it, slapping them down in her hand.

“Thank _you_!” Ariadne sings, leaning up to peck Eames’s cheek before looking back at Arthur and rolling her eyes. “Don’t let this one try and match-make for you. He ain’t Cupid, that’s for sure.”

Eames slaps a hand over his heart, his mouth falling agape in mock horror.

“You _wound_ me. Never insult a man’s honor like that, Ariadne.”

She’s already walking away when she gives him the finger, crawling into a flashy cherry red fiat and taking off silently down the dark road. Arthur curses European ingenuity with automobile-making for not allowing Ariadne to have the dramatic exit she deserved complete with screeching tires and a revving engine.

Eames puts his wallet back in his pocket and winks at Arthur, chuckling.

“Women. A much superior species to us phallic heathens, but endlessly impossible.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess.” Arthur shrugs. “She reminds me of my sister.”

Eames gives him an innocently curious look and Arthur suddenly feels like he’s being ogled as if he’s a book Eames has yet to really open past the index.

“Get home safely, pet,” is all he says, nudging Arthur’s shoulder with his own before walking over to where a sleek motorcycle is parked up against the back wall of the restaurant.

Arthur forces himself to wrangle his keys out of his pocket, jam his finger down on the lock button and get into his car instead of standing and staring at Eames as he takes off, ripping down the road; screeching tires included this time.

 

 

After that, the Eames sightings are much more regular. More than fleeting glances but never quite whole conversations. Snippets of interactions intercut through each day. Arthur begins to get the impression that maybe, _maybe_ , Eames is making himself more available to him as well. Whatever _that_ is supposed to mean. The food never gets easier to pair, however. If anything, it gets harder. The notes that accompany his nightly samples, for what it’s worth, get more personal. Or maybe he just has Eames’s humor pinned down in his brain, so they _seem_ more personal… more hilarious.

_‘People think turkey is a Christmas-only poultry but I think anyone who thinks that is a spoon. Pretty sure when I went to bible school as a lad I didn’t read any passages about Jesus getting snippy over people eating this big ugly bird on his birthday.’_

_‘What do you think of turnips? I bloody hate turnips. There are no turnips to be found in this dish. Thank me later.’_

_‘Parsley Parsnip Peanut Pesto. Say that 10 times fast. Go on!’_

Arthur finds that he doesn’t throw them away anymore. He tucks them away in his pocket and digs them out later that night when he’s alone in his apartment. Horrified that he kept them, he generally ends up stuffing all of them into his bedside drawer (in his night stand which he did manage to assemble, along with the tv stand and the coffee table and the kitchen table.)

 

 

He makes his way into work on a drizzly afternoon after two and a half weeks of knowing Eames by fractions, fog settling in all around the pines that hide the restaurant away from the main road. Planting himself down in the wine cellar around 2pm, sitting cross-legged on the filthy floor, he memorizes the flavor profiles of some very expensive top-shelf labels, filing the information away nearly in his head for later use.

The footsteps don’t startle him this time.

When he looks up, Eames is standing over him, his arms crossed tightly against his broad chest. He’s dressed casually again: a blue hoodie with some kind of university logo on it, and jeans that fit a little _too_ right.

“Do you fancy a little stroll?” he says.

“Where?” Arthur blinks up at him dumbly.

“Just back in the forest a bit. I’ve some collecting to do.”

Arthur has no idea what this means, but he’s given up trying to understand Eames and would rather stay on Eames’s good side lest he decide to make his dishes even _harder_ to pair. _God forbid_. So he nods, and follows him up the stairs into the dining room and out the back door through the kitchen where the staff are already prepping. They all greet Eames boisterously in an assortment of languages and accents, and sending confused but courteous smiles to Arthur. Ariadne grins cheerfully at him from where she’s kneading some kind of dough, waving with flour-coated fingers.

Eames snatches a basket, the elegant kind one thinks of as only existing in nursery rhymes or BBC period pieces, confusing Arthur even more as to what this little expedition is actually _about_ , but he doesn’t question it. He figures they’re going on some kind of hunter-gatherer deal, something all the hipster chefs he used to work with would go crazy for.

They make their way out back and up a semi-steep hill up to the mouth of the small surrounding forest, at least what Arthur has always assumed is a small forest given what he’s seen on google maps. The forest doesn’t seem small, however. The trees are dense and Arthur struggles to keep up with Eames, his loafers hardly a march for what appears to be _actual_ hiking boots that Eames is wearing, but the fresh air fills his lungs with the musky-sweet scent of wet pine and earth and for a second it feels like he’s back in Colorado as a child on one of his family’s many outdoorsy vacations to visit his aunt and uncle, clawing his way up 14ers and through canyons.

After about ten minutes of silent (but not unpleasant) walking through thick brush and damp foliage, they happen across a small clearing with – Arthur mentally pats himself on the back for totally guessing the whole ‘hunter-gatherer’ thing – a large amount of mushrooms.

“Ah, here we are…” Eames hums happily, tossing his basket down on the ground and kneeling over a group of tangled-looking tan mushrooms with thin stems. He easily picks them with a small pocket knife he produces from his pocket. As he slices across their stems, they make a sort of disgusting squeaky-wet noise and Arthur goes to kneel beside him, fascinated.

“How do you know they aren’t poisonous?” he asks carefully.

“Mm, lots of training. I’m licensed to do this in the states… not many are. I worked at a restaurant in Taos, New Mexico for a while and trained under a very famous mushroom chef. It’s different’ here. Anybody can pop out and pick their own mushrooms here, but loads of people die from it.”

Arthur wonders if this is an actual fact or if Eames just happened to pull that out of his ass, but as Eamesian is a language he is still slowly learning he lets it go, humming in interest and watching as Eames begins piling the fungi into his basket. He taps it with his carving knife.

“Wicker. They want you to always use a wicker basket so the spores can fall out whilst you carry them and more mushrooms will grow.”

“How sustainable.”

“It is, innit? This,” he motions toward the tangled mushrooms he picked, “is called honey fungus. Not particularly native here, but it’ll grow anywhere damp where there are trees nearby. It’s delicious in soups, specifically. Not sure what I’ll do with it this evening. Might make a tarte.” He cuts the stems of several larger mushrooms, bigger and rounder. He seems a bit lost in himself, then, and doesn’t explain what they are. Arthur simply watches, somewhat captivated, somewhat confused as to what the hell Eames wanted to take him on this little field trip for.

“So-” he begins.

“You’ve been brilliant,” Eames interrupts without looking up from where he’s sorting through a small cluster of dark mushrooms with translucent looking caps. “I feel like I never get a chance to tell you, at least not so blatantly, so I thought I’d let you know.”

Arthur lifts an eyebrow, deeply flattered but still wading his way through the bone-deep sense of confusion.

“Thank you,” he says carefully, shifting his weight so he’s leaning against a part of the fallen tree-trunk in front of them that isn’t covered in delectable fungi. “So… I feel like… I’ve told you about myself. I don’t know anything about you.” He feels stupid immediately after the words come out of his mouth, but there’s no way he can take them back.

Eames glances at him with an amused glint in his eyes. “Did you? Tell me about yourself? I seem to remember you told me you were from Sonoma, and that your family owned a winery, and that was it.” He focuses his eyes back down on the mushrooms. “But alright, love, if I must be the first to spill my guts, so be it.” He sits back, setting the basket down on the mossy ground and leaning back, his bare forearms flexing under his own weight. Arthur swallows.

“Well, I’m from London. Knightsbridge, specifically. Grew up in a rather well-off family. You can imagine my father’s disappointment when I decided that I didn’t want to go to university to become a barrister or a politician… so I fucked off to chef school in Paris. Ended up here somehow… really, it isn’t that interesting.”

“You had an entire segment dedicated to you in a Netflix documentary series on the best chefs in the world,” Arthur blurts indignantly. He may or may not have done all the research he _should_ have done on Eames after their first encounter. “You have eight hundred thousand followers on Instagram…”

Arthur sees a flicker of something akin to confoundedness flash across Eames’s face at the first part of his statement, but after the second half, he emits a bark of laughter. “Bloody no clue why, all I post are selfies and pictures of my succulent garden.”

“But still… that sounds pretty interesting to me.”

Eames eyes him curiously, his lips parting to reveal another devilish grin like the one he produced the first time they met, and Arthur can’t tell if he’s basking in his own ego or genuinely fascinated with what Arthur has to say; his opinion. Something about the way the light glitters against the tiny droplets of water on the bark of the tree trunk, the cool, damp breeze that tickles the hair pleasantly at the back of his neck… makes him inclined to believe the latter.

“Well thank you, duck.”

Before Arthur had a chance to respond to the pet-name, something he’d been meaning to bring up with him anyway, Eames turned on him quickly, sitting cross-legged and crossing his arms.

“Your turn.”

“I already told you, I’m from Sonoma.”

“That hardly counts. Tell me _more_.”

Arthur furrows his brow and stares at him, dumbfounded. _More? But what else could…_

Eames continues: “You know, the real _nitty-gritties_ of it all. The stuff that leads to who you are.”

 _Why?_ Arthur wants to ask. _Why do you care?_

“Well…” He brushes the back of his hand against his forehead, not sweating but in nervous habit. “I told you my family owns a winery. Paradosso Wines. My grandpa started it when he was young after emigrating from Italy and it got passed down. It was supposed to get passed down to me, but I don’t really like growing the stuff, I just like drinking it.”

Eames snorted at that, and Arthur felt his lip curl despite himself.

“I like drinking it too, though I couldn’t tell you anything worthwhile about it. That’s why we have you, darling. To sort that bit out.”

Arthur smiled. “When I was eighteen my dad wanted me to go to UCLA to get a degree in business so I could take over the family vineyard. I got in and everything, and even made it down to LA, but once I was there I just… bolted. I used my savings to travel for a couple of years. Came here, went to Italy, went to Africa and Asia and South America and in every single place the thing I kept finding was incredible wine. I realized that wine had so many more possibilities than the stuff my dad was growing. So when I got home I moved to New York and got my sommelier certificate. And that’s that.”

Eames stares at him with stony eyes, his mouth slightly agape, and Arthur plucks at a piece of grass, trying to avoid his gaze. He’s never opened up to someone like that before – never told them his life story.

“Brilliant,” Eames says quietly, before going back to the mushrooms, his voluptuous lips quirked into a thoughtful sort of smile.

Arthur still doesn’t know why he’s here – why Eames took time out of his day to bring him here and shower praise on him, ask him about his life. None of it makes any sense.

And yet here he is, somehow. Half way around the world, away from his family and everything he knows, living this dream that he’s been striving towards for years. And it’s in that moment, looking at Eames sniffing mushrooms and humming to himself, that he realizes that he isn’t _fulfilled_. He isn’t _happy_. He’s made it to his dream and _now what_?

He’s been lonely. He has no idea how he’s overlooked this simple fact, but the yearning for companionship, for friendship, for _sex_ , for intimacy, for conversation… it’s been eating at him. Dom’s been perfectly welcoming and cordial. Mal, loving and warm. Ariadne, hilarious and friendly. But _Eames_ … well, Arthur doesn’t quite know what it is about Eames that makes Arthur want to be around him whenever possible.

“I could…” He clears his throat, feeling it tighten just ever so slightly down around his larynx. “Teach you. A thing or two about wine. If you wanted.” He cringes at how he sounds more like a middle schooler asking his crush to the sure-to-be-awkward school dance instead of a grown-ass twenty-eight year old man.

Eames sets down the mushrooms and his knife into the basket, turning to him with a big, goofy grin plastered to his face.

“No restaurants, though. We spend enough of our lives slaving away at a bloody restaurant. Why don’t you come round to mine and I’ll cook you dinner and you can bring the wine, hmm?”

 _Shit_. Arthur realizes too late that he definitely just asked Eames out on a _date_ , not just a platonic wine-tasting session between two _totally platonic_ colleagues. He’d envisioned, vaguely, staying late at the restaurant with Eames and maybe getting Dom’s permission to crack into one of the cheaper bottles of wine from the cellar. But this… _this_ …

Eames blanches. “No strings attached, love. Not trying to wine and dine you. I just enjoy your company, yeah? It’s so hard to find good company out here that I’m not in charge of, or isn’t in charge of me.” Eames sounds like he’s stumbling backwards verbally, and Arthur realizes he must have been making a face echoing the panic rising inside of his mind. “But I also do want to learn about wine. And if you learn a bit more about my food… maybe it’ll make it easier for you to pair.”

That, Arthur decides, is reasonable. More than reasonable. It’ll be like staying up late to study and review for a quiz. Overtime, with good food. “Of course,” Arthur smiles, focusing on both trying to let the tension ease out of his shoulders and keep his voice even. _No strings attached_. “I’ll need to know what you’re cooking for dinner in advance whenever we do this, though. The wine has to match.”

“Well, I’ll let you know a few hours before, then. I don’t really plan ahead… ever.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Eames snorts before looking up at him from under his thick blonde lashes, now peppered with dew from the drizzling rain. “Thursday evening, maybe? After close?” 

Arthur considers carefully, as if he has any plans for Thursday other than going home, eating week-old cheese and crackers and falling asleep watching the X-Files. “Thursday.” He nods.

Eames beams, standing up and helping Arthur to his feet as well. “C’mon then, back to work we go. Thanks for coming on this little adventure with me. Always more fun with company.”

“That mushroom tarte better be pretty killer,” Arthur teases, walking a little too close to Eames as they make their way back across the rough terrain.

“Darling,” Eames purses his lips humorously, “it’ll knock you on your _arse_.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Attendez! S’il vous plaît!”

Arthur jogs up from the road toward Mme Lévêque, the elderly owner of his favorite wine merchant. She blinks at him with wide eyes under her magnifying glasses and sighs, unlocking the door and letting Arthur inside with a tisk and a playful swat to the shoulder. She has a soft spot for him and always gushes about how he looks _so much_ like one of her favorite old Hollywood stars, Farley Granger (he prefers to think of himself as more of a young Gregory Peck, but he’ll take Farley), so she allows him to poke around while she busies herself with re-sweeping the floor and counting the inventory. Arthur yanks the note out of his pocket, the one he received earlier that evening alongside a sample of seared scallops with hollandaise sauce.

Under an address and a phone number it reads:

‘ _I’m feeling a bit lazy tonight and I have a craving, so I’m going to make breakfast for supper. A good fry-up. See you at 10._ ’

“Asshole,” Arthur whispers under his breath, staring down at the labels of wine before him, trying to force one of them to jump out at him and scream ‘ _ME! CHOOSE ME!’_

Breakfast is notoriously difficult to pair. Arthur knows he shouldn’t be surprised, and he knows this is _good_ , because Eames had promised him that this would serve as practice and make his life easier in the long run, especially after Eames tells him whatever his secret is in how he decides on flavors, but the fact still remains that eggs are _impossible_ to pair. Besides the fact that he now has to consider the addition of fatty meats, sweet and savory beans, and maybe a salty black or white pudding.

 _Eggs_ … he rolls the word around in his head for a few moments, imagining the unique flavor touching his tongue. Another problem with eggs is that every single way you make them tastes differently. He decides to think of the more _chefy_ ways to make eggs: poached, quiche’d, frittata’d.

“Arthur, mon chou…” Mme Lévêque quips from behind him, standing by the cash register with her windbreaker and hat back on, and looking tired.

“Pardon,” Arthur chirps as he snatches up a bottle of dry, acidic South African Barbera, one of his favorites, as well as a deep smoky pinot noir from Italy before bringing them both up to the register.

Mme Lévêque smiles fondly at him as she scribbles down his receipt, gently placing the bottles into brown paper bags.

“Special night?” she says, her accent thick but her English improved since the last time he saw her.

He smiles lopsidedly, taking the receipt from her and slipping a €10 tip into her tip jar. “En quelque sorte,” he responds. _Sort of_.

She beams warmly from behind her wire spectacles, beckoning him for a kiss on each cheek.

“Enjoy, mon ange. And you come again _very_ soon, oui?”

“Bien sûr.” He slides his wallet back into his pocket and scoops up the bags. _Of course_.

He checks his watch when he makes his way out. _Nine o’clock_. He has one hour. The restaurant closed at eight-thirty (as it normally does on weeknights: early) and he had practically bolted to try and make it to the wine merchant before closing. Now, mission accomplished, he fumbles with his car keys and drives back to his flat, jogging up the stairs.

He showers, shaves, and then – standing entirely nude in his cramped bathroom – he finds himself at an impasse with his hair. Eames, except for their very first meeting (which Arthur assumes he doesn’t even remember that well considering how unremarkable it was) has only ever seen it slicked back, glued to his scalp. Much different than where it sits now, clean and fluffy atop his head, cropped short but shaggy enough for the slicked-back look to actually look decent. Towel-dried, his waves fall down across his forehead in an attractive sort of way, at least he likes to think so. He looks more like the old Arthur. The Arthur that liked to drive in his dad’s old Buick with the top down. The Arthur that used to smoke a joint with his friends on the beach. But _no_. This isn’t the Arthur that Eames knows. This isn’t the Arthur that Eames is privy to. Not _yet_.

He snatches up his jar of expensive gel and warms it up in his hands, pushing his hair back and coating it until it behaves and stays perfectly in place. When he looks at the mirror again, the face looking back at him has aged by ten or so years.

He chooses his clothes carefully, holding various shirt and pant combinations up in front of himself while he looks into his full length mirror and gets annoyed with himself as he does so. _Why does it matter?_ Eventually he lands on a pair of black jeans and a button-up blue shirt; something casual but something that he still feels like himself in: plain, smooth lines, neutral colors, crisp edges. He looks at his watch again after he puts it back on: nine-thirty. He chucks on some cologne and checks himself over in the mirror before locking up his apartment and climbing down the stairs to his car.

Eames’s house (not apartment, as it turns out) is closer to the restaurant, out past the suburbs in the outskirts of town. The lights glaring off of Arthur’s windshield become less and less the further outside of the city he goes, and soon when his headlights are the only thing lighting his way, Arthur realizes that he’s well and truly left the city and entered rural France.

His GPS leads him to a long, winding driveway that leads to what appears to be a cottage nestled cozily against rolling hills. It’s stone brick and ancient-looking with a sloped shingled roof and burgundy red shutters outlining the long veranda windows. He slows down when he reaches the small parking area in front of the house, his wheels crunching loudly in the gravel below and surely announcing his arrival. After locking his car, he tucks one bottle under each arm and makes his way up to the big red front door. Some paint is chipped, but in a charming way, not in a run-down way. Arthur notices that the cobble path leading to the front door is lined with herbs, making the air fragrant with lemon thyme and rosemary and dill.

The door swings open before he even has a chance to try and balance both bottles in one arm so he can knock. Eames stands on the other side, a delighted grin spread across his face upon laying eyes on Arthur.

“’Ello, ‘ello! Right on time, I see. Come in!” Before Arthur can ask if he’s actively trying to embody every British stereotype known to man, Eames takes a bottle from Arthur and motions him inside. Arthur blinks after him for a beat, pointedly ignoring the way his ass looks in the grey sweatpants he’s clad in, but eventually he steps forward after him. After stepping across the threshold, Arthur’s hit with a wall of delicious smells. It sledgehammers into him and as if on cue, his stomach makes a disgustingly loud growling noise which he’s sure that Eames must hear. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry until that very moment, and then suddenly it’s as if he hasn’t eaten in ten days.

The hunger is almost a distraction to how charmingly _off_ Eames’s style of décor is. Nothing matches. Plaid next to argyle. Pink next to green. Arthur’s shocked to find that instead of making his eyes bleed, it somehow… works. In a strange way. In an _Eames_ way, just like how Eames’s socks never match his shoes, or how his wonky teeth don’t match his stormy-smooth eyes. He opens his mouth to comment, just something lazy and teasing, but Eames herds him into the kitchen, where the smell is the strongest (almost an assault to Arthur’s hungry stomach).

Eames saunters over to the counter where he has two long-stemmed wine glasses already sitting out for them. The kitchen, all recently renovated shades of steel and marble, is suspiciously clean for somewhere that’s producing such succulent smells.

“So, what’d you make?” Arthur asks casually, gently prodding to see if he can figure out which wine they should start with.

“Well!” Eames says grandly on top of a sigh, clasping his hands together and padding across the tile with bare feet before leaning down to poke his head in the oven. “I’ve got all kinds of nibbles, really. Have you ever had a proper fry-up before?”

“Not… exactly?” Arthur answers, leaning against the counter. The truth is he’d had breakfast in a pub once during a lay-over in London, but it was nothing special. Everything was much too salty, covered in a thick layer of greasy film, and he was too hungover to enjoy any of it.

“Well… it’s really about the parts. Some people like potatoes, some people like mushrooms… I prefer something that’s pretty traditional, but also really isn’t because I’m not a traditionalist in the least.”

Arthur snorts despite himself, smirking up at Eames knowingly while Eames just rolls his eyes and grins, motioning for him to come see the food.

He takes the lid off of a small pot on the stove, and the savory smell of herbs and butter hit him first. “Here we’ve got some beans, but I prefer mine more savory so these are some brown butter and thyme white kidney beans.” Arthur immediately salivates, his nose instinctively chasing after that scent before it’s cut off and replaced with another. He takes the lid off another pan. “And these are some sausages I picked up at my butcher earlier. They’re pretty standard but they’re brilliant.” He sets the lid back on those and opens the oven. “Roasted cherry tomatoes…” He closes the oven and smiles, wiping his hands carelessly on his sweatpants. “And then I have some really good homemade ciabatta for toast, and I’ll fry us up some eggs just before, et voilà!”

“You’re nuts,” Arthur says before he can stop himself. “You were just supposed to make something simple… you said you were feeling _lazy_ … ”

“This _is_ simple, love. What you see before you is all a product of my overwhelming laziness.”

“But you’ve been cooking all day at Limbo!”

“Cooking,” Eames turns to him and sets both hands, curled into fists, on Arthur’s shoulders, looking him square in the eye, “is what I do. It’s my own special form of meditation.” He grins. “Besides, I don’t really cook during the day, do I? I just bark orders, run around like a mental patient, and taste things. When you become important enough, when you become a _chef de cuisine_ with some renown, your job stops really being what you want it to be. I love cooking food for people I know, and myself, and being able to actually enjoy it. It’s a real treat. So let me treat you and myself, hmm?”

Arthur can’t argue. He doesn’t know how at this point. He just stares dumbly while Eames raps his knuckles against Arthur’s shoulders for emphasis before moving away from him, walking over to where the wine glasses are set. “So which of these gorgeous bottles you brought should we start with? This South African one looks gorgeous. I worked at a restaurant in Mombasa for a couple years and if I remember correctly, the African wines were always divine.”

Arthur notices the way Eames’s eyes turn distant for a moment, as if he’s lost in some memory. He heads over to where Eames is and picking up the bottle closest. “Well, I think the South African Barbera will go well with dinner, so we’ll crack that open now, and maybe try the pinot noir one after?”

Eames’s eyebrows shoot up, but Arthur makes a point to keep his face placid. He doesn’t want to think about what the implications of a bottle of wine _after_ dinner are, and instead focuses on keeping the air of a professional that wants to help educate. Eames crosses his arms. “Mm, we’re going to be proper pissed after this night’s through, aren’t we? A bottle of wine each? You’ll have to sleep on my couch.”

“I don’t get drunk,” Arthur says quickly, grabbing the corkscrew Eames set out on the counter and peeling the lining off of the top of the bottle expertly. Eames blinks at him quizzically.

“Do you mean… you don’t get drunk, or you can’t?”

“Both, I guess,” Arthur says with a shrug as he wiggles the cork free with a gratifying _ploop_. Eames’s eyebrow stays incredulously arched, so with a long suffering sigh after setting the bottle aside to breathe for a moment, he continues:

“I’ve been drinking wine since I was a kid. Not huge amounts back then or anything, but I think over time I built up a resistance. I can drink a whole bottle and not feel anything. I can drink _two_ whole bottles and not feel anything. And I don’t drink other types of alcohol, so I’ve never been drunk. Never tried.”

Eames stares at him, nonplussed. “You’re telling me you made it through your teen years _and_ the larger portion of your twenties without getting well and properly _clobbered_?”

“That is precisely what I’m telling you.” Arthur offers him a wry smile, sliding the wine classes toward him and pouring a small amount into the bottom of each. “Now, do you want to learn about how to taste wine or not?”

“Right.” Eames grabs his own glass, watching Arthur carefully. Arthur swirls the crimson liquid around in his glass.

“The first step is to look at it. You can tell a lot about a wine by how it looks… mainly age.” He tilts his glass, holding it up to the light. “Older vintages will generally have a brown or a yellow cast in the light. This one’s pretty clear, meaning it’s a younger vintage.”

Arthur glances over and watches as Eames doesn’t follow his lead, but instead watches him closely, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Next, smell.” Arthur brings the glass down slightly, just under his nose. “There are layers to smelling wine. Three main ones. First you get the obvious ones, like whether or not a wine is fruity or smoky or nutty. Then,” he breathes in deeply, “you get the secondary layer which hints to the process of the winemaking. Then the third layer hints at aging and storage… whether it was stored in oak, how old it is…”  

He feels Eames’s eyes still on him while he lowers the glass to his parted lips, leaning his head back just enough for a small amount of the wine to slide between them. He closes his eyes, swishing the tart liquid around the front of his mouth against his teeth before letting it slide back across his tongue before being swallowed. When he opens his eyes, he finds Eames’s gaze still trained on him, his wine glass lowered. Arthur quirks a brow expectantly. “Try, and tell me what you think.”

And so Eames does. He follows Arthur’s steps perfectly, holding the liquid up to the light with the glass tilted, sniffing it deeply, and finally taking a small sip, swooshing it around before it’s swallowed. He looks thoughtful for a moment, squinting down at his feet in deep concentration, before a smile creeps onto his lips.

“There’s a fruitiness, but it’s tart. It’s very high in acid.”

“Yes…” Arthur smiles, taking another sip and nodding in agreement. “Anything else?”

“Maybe a bit… oaky?”

Arthur can’t help but nod enthusiastically. He is, after all, quite passionate about the importance of oak aging and storage.

“Yes, absolutely. The oak aging is very important for a good Barbera, in my opinion.”

“It’s not as dry as most red wines I’ve had,” Eames comments, taking another, slightly longer sip. Arthur’s eyes catch the way Eames’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and he has to force himself to tear his eyes away.

“No, it’s low in tannins compared to a lot of other red wines. Tannins are a kind of molecule that make certain wines dry and bitter. I thought that would be a bit too intense against the eggs.”

“Good thinking. Bitterness doesn’t quite match with rich egg yolk.” Eames winks. “Right. Shall we, then?”

Arthur sips his wine and leans against the counter while Eames finishes off dinner, expertly poaching them each a couple of eggs (Arthur’s satisfied with himself for guessing that it would be poached eggs) before dishing everything up on big round white plates. He carefully arranges all of the food like an artist realizing their masterpiece on canvas: eggs nestled against thick, beautiful wedges of toasted ciabatta cut on a bias, steaming sausages laying perpendicular, and beans and tomatoes generously ladled around everything.

They eat at a breakfast bar facing the kitchen, and Arthur can all but stop himself from shoveling the food in his mouth between small sips of tangy South African wine (which, to his great pleasure, goes excellently with the food). The smoky plum notes brought about by the hint of oak cut through the fatty richness of the eggs and the meat, make the tart tomatoes sing, and even somehow make the beans even _more_ decadent. Arthur’s so busy tasting everything – _enjoying_ the food – he barely stops to think about why he’s here in the first place.

“So... what’s your method in putting flavors together?”

Eames looks up from his own plate, and Arthur feels a pang of something under his diaphragm at the sight of Eames with the inner-rim of his lips stained red with wine, a crumb of ciabatta settled in the corner of them. _Oh god, his lips_. Though he doesn’t get drunk, thoughts do come easier after two or more glasses of wine. And he’s on his third.

“Mm.” Eames grabs his napkin and wipes his mouth, snapping Arthur out of whatever daze he’d stumbled into. “Brilliant question that I don’t really have an answer to.”

Arthur quirks his brow and watches as Eames tear his toast and drags it through the thick, syrupy egg yolk pool in the middle of his plate.

There’s a beat of silence but Arthur’s mind fills it.

_What the hell am I doing here, then?_

“But I thought-” Arthur begins.

“I just… try things,” Eames interrupts. “I put two and two together and hope desperately that it equals four. Sometimes it doesn’t… but after years and _years_ of doing the math… I think I’ve finally got the swing of it. And I’m seriously shite at math, but I have an intuition for it… flavors and things. Of course there are the things they teach you… acid cuts through fat, sugar cuts through bitterness… but unique flavors just come naturally to me.” He points down at his plate. “Brown butter beans with thyme, white pepper and just a _little_ bit of duck fat. Never heard of it before… tried it tonight, and I think it’s pretty decent, don’t you?”

Arthur nods, unwilling to say the words ‘ _understatement of the fucking century’_ over his mouthful of said beans. He can _barely_ think straight over the near-orgasmic sensation of the savory, delicious beans popping in his mouth. One thought does manage to crawl its way to the front of his mind, however: _Long jog. Tomorrow morning._

Despite Arthur’s annoyance at not getting what he came for, they finish dinner with the accompaniment of light, meaningless chatter. Eames tells Arthur a chef school story about how he’d managed to prank his entire pastry class by switching the sugar with salt and vice-versa. Arthur tells Eames about the time a chef he worked for got arrested in the middle of the dinner rush for purchasing and dealing rare exotic seasonings on the black market, then proceeded to set off the fire alarm and try and bolt.

At one point Arthur registers the music billowing in from the living room and lifts an eyebrow.

(“Is this Simon and Garfunkel?”

“Yes! Paul Simon’s quite the poet. Do you listen to them at all?”

“Hazy Shade of Winter’s on my running playlist.”

“You _would_ choose their most bloody depressing song to exercise to.”

“It has a good beat.”)

When Eames moves to clear away their dishes and open the second bottle of wine, Arthur catches a glance at the clock on the wall and sighs. It’s nearing midnight and he already feels like he’s overstayed his welcome, and that’s beyond the fact that he feels like he’s learned absolutely nothing that will help him at the restaurant. The visit was much more of a social one than an educational one. He can’t shake the feeling of frustration that this was all for naught.

“I should probably head out,” he says as he slips out of his chair.

Eames blinks up at him, his lips tightening into a frown.

“You won’t stay and help me polish this off?” he says, holding up the pinot noir.

“Keep it… let me know tomorrow what you thought of it.”

Arthur swears for just a fraction of a second, he can see something akin to a _pout_ take ahold of Eames’s face. It happens so fast he isn’t even sure he really saw it: the way his bottom lip puffs out, his brow furrows and his eyes grow sad. But then it’s gone, replaced with one of the grand, excessive smiles Arthur’s gotten to know so well. He tells himself he’s imagined it. Eames _isn’t_ , in fact, sad at the prospect of his absence.

“Well thank you, Arthur.”

“Thanks for dinner. It was delicious.”

Arthur turns toward the door, already fishing in his coat pocket for his car keys.

“Listen.” Eames says from behind him. Arthur turns on his heel attentively.

“I’ve actually been doing this pretty often,” Eames continues, “cooking meals for myself in the evenings. A lot of the time, I’m trying new things out. It’d be lovely to get a second opinion, and also learn some more about wine tasting, because that’s some next-level shite, truly…”

Arthur snorts, shifting his weight from one leg to the other as he stands in the foyer, his arms crossed.

“How about…” Arthur says, finally finding his car keys and putting his thumb on the unlock button, keeping it in his pocket. “I let you know?”

Something sparks in Eames’s eyes and he nods, walking past Arthur, almost bouncing as he goes, and opening the door for him. He sets a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and squeezes a bit.

“Brilliant,” he quips. “See you tomorrow, then!”

Arthur side-steps him and makes his way back out onto the gravel path.

“Tomorrow,” Arthur echoes before the door closes.

 _Well that was weird_.

He makes his way back to his car, the gravel crunching under his shoes sounding hyper-loud, the scent of damp dill and far-off rain filling up his sinuses. He wonders if his senses are oversaturated from how hard he tried to taste every morsel of food, or maybe how hard he had unintentionally tried to memorize every inflection, every quirk of Eames’s voice.

The drive home seems even longer than it was getting there. The winding roads do nothing to settle his muddled mind. If anything, they seem to tangle together with his thoughts, lunging him forward into a web of uncertainty and anxiety. Why did Eames invite him there if he wasn’t going to actually tell him anything about his method? Arthur held up on his end of the bargain – he feels he gave a perfectly adequate lesson on wine tasting. Eames was supposed to teach him _why_ he chose flavors… if there was any pattern or method to his madness at all. And Arthur _knows_ there is. There has to be. Genius like that is practiced. Eames has the unmatched ability to transport people to different places, make them feel different things… even make them feel like entirely different people. Arthur’s eaten a lot of food by a lot of world-class chefs and he can always find a common thread… a pattern in the dishes that connects them to each other, and to the chef. He prides himself in being able to recognize it and exploit it to make his job easier. People, he’s found, are predictable. They may come off as aloof and impulsive but there’s always a pattern about them that gets right to the core of them and shows their true self. But he can’t find that in Eames. It’s like every single night that the doors open to Limbo, Eames becomes a different person with a different palette and a different style. There’s no pattern, no thread, no predictability.

To Arthur it feels like some kind of con. He wonders if he really knows Eames at all… he wonders if _anyone_ knows Eames. It’s all like some riddle, and Eames offers no hints in his food.

When he gets home, he goes to take off his jacket and hears something peel off of the back of it and hit the floor. At first he thinks it’s a bug, but when he glances down at the floor he sees a little yellow sticky note. He kneels to pick it up, squinting down at the scribbled text in the handwriting he’s learned so well over these past weeks.

‘ _Kobe beef with wasabi-lime butter, camembert potatoes au gratin, white asparagus’_

Arthur stares down at the obnoxiously yellow note like it holds the key to life, the universe, existence…

Time. Eames has given him _time_.

(Even if he’s done it in the world’s most obnoxious way via secret sticky note.)

He sprints over to his notebook, sprawling out on his bed and flipping through his notes violently. He sticks the note up on his headboard in plain sight, the words scrawled upon it becoming like a beacon to him. _Beef, so red. Kobe beef, though, so an acidic red that can cut through the fat. Camembert goes well with smoky flavors._

At 3am he has his choice: a deep, dark Cabernet with a very high acid content. 1975 vintage. The notes he has on it are extensive from other somms who tried it in the past.

As he lays in bed, his exhausted mind still reeling, he realizes that in knowing more about tomorrow’s nightly special, he still knows nothing about Eames. If anything, after this random kind stunt, he knows less.

 

 

The next night goes off without a hitch. The customers are practically moaning after every bite, every sip, and Arthur can’t help but feel relief welling in his chest. If Eames is going to start giving him the menu the night before, his life will be so much easier. No more last-minute panic an hour before the dinner rush. No more sleepless nights of anxiety wondering what challenge the next day will bring.

After, Arthur waits outside the back door, nodding at all the passing greetings he gets from the kitchen staff as they leave in pairs or trios to go home for the night.

Eventually Ariadne slips out the door and nearly screeches when she spots him.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Arthur! You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry.” He clears his throat. “Is Eames still in there…?”

“Yeah, he’s staying late to do something or another. You can go in.” She holds the door open for him and he takes it, thanking her before making his way into the dark kitchen.

Eames sits on a stool pulled up to one of the newly-scrubbed steel countertops, scribbling something furiously into a small notebook that looks pretty similar to Arthur’s own moleskin, the first few buttons of his chef’s coat undone, an open beer bottle beside him. Arthur doesn’t want to startle him, so he makes sure his footsteps are loud enough to be noticed. Eames glances up and sits back, pushing the notebook away from himself and closing it, smiling.

“Hello Arthur.”

“Hey.” Arthur walks over and leans against the other side of the counter, kicking at the floor a bit. “I just wanted to say thank you. For dinner last night and for… for the heads up.”

Eames lights up. “I heard your pairing tonight was the best yet. Although Dom says that every night, but I think he really meant it this time.”

Arthur shifts his weight. “So… is this going to be a new routine, or…?”

When he looks up, Eames is looking at him with a bright-eyed smirk.

“Oh love, do you think this is going to be a nightly thing?” He chuckles, crossing his arms. “No, I only think up the next day’s recipe late into the night before. I thought of it while making supper for us yesterday, that’s why I gave it to you.” His smirk widens. “I’m afraid if you want the next day’s recipe, you’re gonna have to pop ‘round to mine again.”

“Can’t you just text it to me?” Arthur counters, gritting his teeth against each other.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Eames quirks his lip in a challenging way, his eyes fond. It makes Arthur indescribably angry.

“So.” Arthur straightens his back clarifying. “You’ll only give me the recipe if I come over again?”

“Thursday.” Eames nods. “And bring more wine.”

“You’re _impossible_.” Arthur doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but it comes out anyway. It’s in the worst tone of voice too: whiny, put-out, pouty. He cringes afterward but Eames, infuriatingly, _giggles_.

“Darling, if I didn’t bribe you in some fashion, I’d never see you again. You’d lock yourself down in that dreary cellar and we’d never cross paths during the day.”

“That isn’t true.”

Eames gives him a wry look and Arthur sighs, looking down and smiling despite himself. When he looks back up, Eames’s expression is softer somehow, even against the harsh shadows caused by a single emergency light to their right.

“What?” Arthur asks, rubbing ruefully at his right arm and feeling uncomfortable.

“Oh nothing.” Eames clears his throat. “Just… your dimples.”

“What about them?” Arthur questions.

“They’re lovely.” Eames shakes his head suddenly, standing and grabbing a leather jacket off of the stool beside him, sliding it on. “I’d best be off. See you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Of course,” Arthur says, brow furrowed, still reeling from what just happened. Eames leaves without another word, and when he’s gone, Arthur reaches up and touches his face. _They’re lovely_.

He pours the rest of Eames’s beer into one of the sinks before recycling the bottle, leaving the kitchen and making sure the door locks behind him.

 _They’re lovely_.

He shakes his head and turns on the ignition, coming to impossible terms with the fact that Cedric Eames is an enigma in more ways than just his food.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of the french is wrong, I apologize, it's been a few years since I last took french class!


	3. Chapter 3

On the fourth Thursday-tutoring-meal-but-not-really, Arthur peers casually over Eames’s shoulder, trying not to exude any of the complete and total eagerness he’s experiencing at the smell of the hamburgers currently getting crispy on Eames’s stovetop grill. He’d promised Arthur in the note from earlier _‘something that will probably remind you of home… I dunno, I assume you Americans eat burgers and fries all the time_ ’, but Arthur can’t remember the last time he’s had a good burger. France’s lack of In-N-Out _and_ Shake Shack is an utter tragedy as far as he’s concerned. Not for his arteries, but for his soul.

“You aren’t doing anything crazy or out of the ordinary,” Arthur comments, crossing his arms and lifting an eyebrow while Eames just smiles, amused.

“If you do too much to a proper burger and fries, you wank it up. I did add some fresh herbs and truffle oil to the fries, and I’m frying the burgers up in a little bit of clarified bacon fat…”

“And you made your own ketchup,” Arthur sighs, going to pop open the cheap bottle of Chilean merlot he brought.

“Well that takes barely any effort at all.” Eames shakes his head, chuckling and placing the blackened burgers onto buns, shoveling a good scoop of fries onto the plates and handing one off to Arthur. “There you are, poppet.”

The first two dinners together, Arthur felt awkward and a little sensitive doing anything that might be considered impolite or informal. Eames always exuded comfort and warmth, but Arthur prefers to be cautious until he finds sure, even footing. The third dinner he was a bit more relaxed. This dinner, however, Arthur doesn’t wait for Eames to finish dishing himself up. He grabs his burger and takes a bit while he walks over to the table, groaning a bit as he sits down.

“Good?” Eames asks, grinning proudly from ear to ear as he slides into the seat adjacent to his. “Does it live up to your barmy yank standards?”

Arthur just glares in response as he’s learned to do every time Eames asks that question, because _how could it be fucking bad_? It’s perfect.

While Arthur’s busy stuffing fries into his mouth, letting the juice from the burger run unceremoniously down his hand and wrist, Eames takes a small bite of his burger before picking up his wine glass. Arthur watches as Eames goes through all the motions: holding the glass up to the light and swirling its contents, sniffing them, and finally taking a small sip.

Arthur pauses in his food frenzy as Eames swishes the liquid around in his mouth before swallowing, his face nothing but contemplative.

“Very dark,” he says. “Smoky… like a campfire. There’s almost something… light to it too, though. Raspberries?”

Arthur quirks the corners of his lips and nods.

“And why did I choose it for the burgers?”

“Because fatty ground beef cuts like butter if it’s done right… this pierces through that while elevating the flavor of the beef.”

“You’re definitely learning.” Arthur can’t keep the satisfied smirk off of his face at the knowledge that he’s been able to teach the Great Eames _something_ about dining.

“I am,” Eames agrees, eying Arthur’s face before rolling his eyes. “You’re practically smarmy, aren’t you?”

“Can’t a teacher be proud of his pupil making progress?” Arthur’s smirk widens and Eames lets out a bark of laughter.

“Right, Aristotle, tell me something about what I cooked up for you tonight. What does it tell you about my process, hmm? My ‘ _method_ ’?” He makes quotation marks with his fingers for emphasis, and now it’s Arthur’s turn to roll his eyes.

Regardless, he looks down at the miraculous burger clenched in both hands, paused half-way to his mouth. It’s so simple… so _simple_ , and yet, so mouthwateringly unique. It’s a burger that makes Arthur want to call up In-N-Out and Shake Shack and tell them to go fuck themselves. Somewhere in front of him, hidden in a plate of burger and fries, however, is Eames’s signature. Some little piece of Eames’s cooking that makes him unique, makes it an _Eames_ dish. Pursing his lips, he shakes his head.

“I don’t know, Eames. Your process is a mystery to me. _You’re_ a mystery to me.”

Arthur looks back up to see that Eames looks genuinely taken aback.

“I don’t have to be,” he says after a long pause. “A mystery. I don’t have to be, to you.”

There’s something in his eyes then that Arthur can’t put his finger on but sends electric chills down his spine and entire central nervous system. He opens his mouth to ask him what he means, ask him to _explain_ to him…

It’s then that there’s a frantic knocking at the door that practically knocks Arthur off of his chair it startles him so much. Eames lifts a brow, his lips settling into a confused frown before he wipes his mouth and sets his napkin down on the table, standing to walk over to the door with a hurried “ _’Scuze me, love_ ” muttered somewhere on the way.

Arthur stays put but sets down the rest of his burger, not really wanting some total stranger walking in on him stuffing his mouth like a starved man. From where he’s sitting however, he can hear muffled familiar voices.

“Cedric,” a woman’s voice says through a sob and Arthur instantly recognizes it as Mal’s. “Cedric, it _happened_ again… I don’t know _why_ … oh _god_ …”

“Darling.” Eames sounds exasperated, and the rest of what he says is whispered, possibly to prevent Arthur from hearing. Whatever he does say, however, is met with a chorus of fresh sobs which soon become muffled. Likely, Arthur imagines, into Eames’s chest.

Arthur wipes his hands on his napkin, unsure of what to do. He knows Mal a bit, maybe even considers her one of his few friends that inhabit this corner of the earth he’s moved to. He considers her to be of a certain brand of people that just emit loveliness in every form. She can make your heart stutter with a look and her laughter sounds like church bells. Arthur knows without any sort of argument that if he was attracted to women, even the slightest bit that isn’t purely idealistic and aesthetic, he would be head over heels in love with her. Sometimes he has no idea how Dom, a man as dense as concrete, overeager and easy to anger, managed to marry a woman that was the human form of dark chocolate, champagne and a warm blanket. She could make even the weariest of travelers feel like they were home.

He wonders vaguely if Dom’s hurting her in some way, and the thought fills him with something icy and jagged.

A moment later, Eames steps back into the kitchen, his face covered in worry and preeminent apologies.

“Arthur, love…”

“It’s fine,” Arthur says quickly, standing and grabbing his jacket.

“It’s really not, I’m so sorry to cut tonight short. I just… I need to speak with Mal for a bit.”

“Is everything okay?” Arthur says darkly and quietly, taking a step forward. If any sort of abuse is happening, he wants to take part in putting an end to it.

Eames shakes his head and pats Arthur’s shoulder, giving him a reaffirming smile.

“Perfectly fine, don’t worry. It’s nothing like what you’re thinking, believe me.”

Arthur takes a deep breath and nods, knowing Eames wouldn’t lie to him about something like that.

(Well, he has no proof that Eames wouldn’t lie to him, but he likes to think that he wouldn’t.)

“Do you want me to wrap up the rest of your food?” Eames offers, reaching for his plate.

“No thanks.” Arthur smiles, having lost his appetite a bit. “Finish that bottle and let me know what you think of it.”

“It’s already a positive review,” Eames chuckles, walking with Arthur to the front door.

In the living room, Mal’s wrapped in one of Eames’s big plaid throw blankets, her mascara smeared onto her cheekbones and her waves sticking up in abnormal directions.

“Hello, mon ange.” Mal smiles weakly as Arthur passes. “Be careful driving home. The roads are treacherous in this weather.”

Arthur frowns and lifts an eyebrow, glancing outside to find it as dry as when he arrived, not even so much as a breeze rattling the trees that line Eames’s driveway.

“Hey Mal.” He smiles at her before looking back at Eames.

“I’ll text you tomorrow’s special,” Eames cringes. “Forgot to write it down so I could hide it somewhere on your person. Shame on me for ruining my favorite tradition.”

Arthur snorts.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow.” Eames smiles, but it doesn’t reach his overcast eyes.

 

When he gets home, Arthur can’t shake the image of Mal from his mind: disheveled, shaking in tears, looking much less like the symphony of a woman that raged through the restaurant each day like a hurricane.

Eames never texts him the menu for the next day, but Arthur doesn’t hold it against him. He’ll survive, he’ll find a way to pair whatever Eames can concoct.

Besides, they’ll have the next week. And the next. And the next.

 

 

 

Autumn happens all at once. Arthur’s used to slightly-less-warm-than-normal-but-still-warm California autumns and New York autumns where the colors change slowly and the temperature falls in a steady decline from hotter than the surface of the sun to the most freezing part of the arctic. But in Bordeaux, he notices how one day in early November he wakes up and finds himself shivering under his light comforter, his windows foggy and spotted with droplets of rain, knocking into each other and rushing down to pool at the sill. With the overnight shift in temperature, he isn’t surprised when he goes to inhale and finds his nose incredibly stuffed up. Spoiled California brat that gets sick every time the sun is just a _little_ bit further away from his part of the earth. He has no idea how he even _survived_ New York winters.

He wraps his comforter around himself and shuffles to dig through his medicine cabinet for his emergency Dayquil, stuffing two in his mouth and cupping his hand under the faucet to get water to swallow them down.

He makes his way to work a little slower than usual, and the day seems to tick by at a sluggish pace, almost like everything’s happening underwater.

One thought keeps him going, however: It’s Thursday. Thursday is untouchable. Sickness can wait.

At 4:30pm, he sits down at his usual table in the back corner and waits patiently. He looks at his phone. An email from his mother explaining that instead of having Christmas at home this year, they’re going with his sister to the Caribbean and that he’s welcome to come. _Hard pass_. A text message from Dom asking him to come babysit his and Mal’s kids on his day off (they’d discovered Phillipa and James had an affinity for him when he came over for dinner once and have been trying to pawn them off on him ever since. He secretly enjoys it.) An email from his ex letting him know that he’s going to stop using Arthur’s Hulu account, something Arthur wasn’t even aware he was doing at all.  

 _‘Glad to see your boyfriend can finally provide for you,’_ he types and then immediately deletes, deciding ultimately not to dignify him with a response.

He looks up when he hears the swinging door slam open, Ariadne rushing out looking past her normal level of flustered and disheveled with a plate in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“Sorry I’m late. _Chef_ changed his mind last minute and made me make the mix for like a thousand blue cheese soufflés. He’s in a shitty mood and now so am I.”

Arthur feels himself frown involuntarily.

“Is he okay?”

“Don’t ask me,” she says in a huff, setting his plate down, handing him the note. “I’m pissed because according to Nash, _Yusuf_ showed up this morning with some lobster tails and he asked after me and _Eames didn’t fucking tell me._ Asshole. Anyway, blue cheese soufflé with filet mignon and a balsamic vinegar fig butter glaze. Enjoy.”

She turns on her heel before Arthur can further question, and he’s left to blink down at the immaculately beautiful plate in front of him. What strikes him is the… _easy_ nature of the dish. All are very strong unique flavors, but classically matched. Figs go with blue cheese. Blue cheese goes with steak. It makes sense, and it shouldn’t. It’s unusual for Eames.  

He snatches up the note, unfolding and reading through it quickly.

 _‘No dinner tonight, love. I’m sorry, I’ve another commitment. But I’ll make it up next week, promise. xx_ ’

Arthur feels disappointment well up in his chest and clenches his fist to fight it. He curses himself for coming to _expect_ this.

Eight weeks. Eight weeks they’ve been meeting every Thursday night at Eames’s cottage. Eight weeks Arthur’s let Eames try all of his favorite wines and Eames has made dizzyingly scrumptious food that makes Arthur spend an extra half an hour at the gym in the mornings. Eight weeks Arthur’s gotten to _know_ Eames. To recognize his quirks and tells. To open himself up to him. To become _friends_ with him. To become _good_ friends with him.

But it’s just one Thursday, he tells himself, just like he did four Thursdays ago the night that Mal showed up. Not a big deal.

The soufflé melts in his mouth, and the filet mignon cuts like butter. He finishes the whole plate quickly before heading down into the cellar to find the specific red blend he has in mind that will match perfectly. It’s an easy pick, since the flavors aren’t too uncommon or remarkable.

That night, after they close up shop and switch off all the lights, Arthur heads back through the swinging door to try and find Eames in the kitchen, only to find a couple of the custodial staff scrubbing sinks.

“He left early,” Yasmine tells him, pulling a headphone out of one ear and popping her gum.

“Thanks.” Arthur ducks out the back door and finds the motorcycle gone as well.

 _Maybe, like me, he’s just not feeling well_ , Arthur muses vaguely to himself as he climbs into his car, feeling the Dayquil starting to wear off as if on cue.

 

At home, he showers and changes into a pair of sweats and a cotton t-shirt his sister got him at Fisherman’s Warf, padding into the kitchen and opening the fridge, staring blankly at its grim contents for well over the universally acceptable stare-blankly-into-fridge time period. He wills something to magically appear, something that doesn’t make his stomach churn. He realizes, then, how spoiled he’s been when it comes to food.

And to think that he didn’t even _look forward_ to eating before.

Cursing himself for not letting any of the extraordinary food he’s been eating recently influence his grocery purchases in a positive way, he settles on a bowl of stale frosted flakes, sans milk (milk – why does he always forget to buy milk?) and goes to sit on his couch and file aimlessly through Netflix, hoping that somehow something will catch his eye today.

Right as he decides on an old episode of Star Trek he used to love as a kid, there’s a pounding at his door that startles him and almost causes him to toss his cereal.

Stumbling to his feet, he rushes over and pries the door open.

Eames looks like shit. His eyes are red-rimmed and he reeks of something bitter and strong, like a juniper bush: gin, if Arthur would have to feign a guess. He’s holding a paper bag of something in his arms. When he sees Arthur he stiffens and manages a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he croaks, his voice rougher than usual. “Dom gave me your address. I-”

“Eames.” Arthur places a hand on his shoulder and leads him inside, closing the door behind them. “Are you okay?”

Eames looks panicked for a moment, like a child cornered after doing something bad. Instead of answering, he holds up the paper bag in his hand.

“Picked up some Chinese take-out… have you eaten?”

Arthur blinks down at the bag, noting the grease stains and strong smell of salty foods, before glancing back at the sad bowl of dry cereal sitting on his coffee table.

“No.” Arthur steps aside and motions for Eames to come in.

Eames takes a step around him and makes a b-line for the kitchen, setting the bag down on his counter and opening and closing cupboards, apparently looking for plates and cutlery. Arthur leans against the wall next to the door, bemused, watching every one of Eames’s movements with a sharp focus that still, somehow, seems hazy. Dream-like. Because there is no way that Eames barging into his apartment, that he’s never been in before, at close to ten at night bearing Chinese food is _reality_.

“I like your place,” Eames says as he finally finds Arthur’s neat stack of boringly white plates and slides two off the top. Arthur pushes off the wall and opens his cutlery drawer, grabbing chopsticks.

“Thanks.” Arthur clears his throat. It’s then that he’s finally hyperaware of himself: hair loose and falling into damp locks across his forehead, dressed in essentially pajamas, looking probably a little pale and red-tinged from the cold. None of that seems to really matter, however, to the slumped-shouldered man in his apartment. The elephant in the room seems a smidge too big for his cramped kitchen, but Arthur doesn’t quite know how to figure out what’s wrong after Eames skillfully side-stepped his first interrogation. “Are you… drunk?” he asks cautiously.

“Not nearly enough. The food’s greasy but it isn’t shite,” Eames mumbles as he dishes Arthur up a plate of fried rice, some vegetable dish with the tiny corn that always makes Arthur think of that one Tom Hanks movie, and crispy duck.

“Better than what my dinner plans were before you showed up,” Arthur chuckles, motioning to the box of frosted flakes still sitting out on the counter. Eames rolls his eyes.

“If I didn’t feed you, how would you manage to survive, petal? One cannot live off of wine and sugar-cereal alone.”

 “I’d manage.” Arthur leads Eames over to his two-seater kitchen table. “I just wouldn’t be very happy about it.”

They eat in silence for several moments, Eames occasionally commenting on Arthur’s ‘bourgeois’ taste in eclectic artwork or the view from his apartment, his eyes scanning for a distraction under the guise of curiosity.

“Eames,” Arthur says after a while, setting his chopsticks down and leaning back in his chair, “what’s going on? What happened?”

He watches while Eames sets down his own chopsticks, rubbing his hands methodically over his face before exhaling loudly.

“It’s Mal,” he finally says. “She isn’t well. She doesn’t do well with pressure… and Dom is an utter cock at making things better. Fuck if he doesn’t make things _worse_. Not on _purpose_ , mind you, but still… he can be such a right twat sometimes. _Tosser…_ ”

Eames seems to be talking at a million miles a minute and Arthur holds up his hand, pausing him.

“Slow down. Why is she feeling pressure?”

Eames lets out an exorbitant puff of air before grabbing his chopsticks again. Arthur watches as he takes a piece of duck and slathers it in sauce, shoving it into his mouth and chewing exasperatedly.

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone until tomorrow when they make the big announcement,” he says through his mouthful, pausing to swallow, his eyes not meeting Arthur’s. He shakes his head. “ _I’m_ not even supposed to know, but she tells me everything.”

Arthur waits as Eames takes another bite, eyebrow raised.

“And?” he encourages.

“ _And_ ,” Eames sets down his chopsticks and folds his arms leaning back in his chair and finally looking up at him, “The Michelin people are coming in March to assess us.”

March. Arthur does the math quickly in his head. December, January, February, Mar-… four months. _Four months to prepare_. His heart races a little, and it isn’t even his cross to bear. The man sitting across from him is the MVP, not him. Well, not _entirely_ him. Wine is certainly a factor, especially since wine played a huge role in them not receiving the full three stars the last time.

“Shit,” is the only word Arthur can string together.

“Agreed.” Eames nods, swallowing heavily, his fingers flexing nervously against the muscle of his forearms. “Mal’s… well, she’s unwell, like I said.”

Arthur immediately thinks of his mother when he was younger, a glass of something stronger than the stuff they kept out in the barrels glued to her lips, staring almost blankly at HGTV for hours. Glossy eyes, a slack mouth, seeming all at once _right there_ and also a hundred million miles away in some unknown corner of the universe. “How unwell?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Eames sighs. “It’s like she’s there one minute, and gone the next. She’s always been a bit troubled, even when we were younger.”

Younger. Arthur opened his mouth to question what that meant, how Eames and Mal could have possibly known each other before the restaurant, but Eames continued without any sort of pause to let Arthur question.

“Things have been worse lately, you know? And I’m freaked out that if we don’t get our third star, or _god forbid_ we have a star taken away from us, she’s going to lose it. And it’ll be my fault.”

His voice cracks at the end and Arthur feels like something inside of him is splitting open a bit, like a loose thread pulling apart a seam. Arthur shakes his head and leans forward as if magnetized.

“No, Eames, it wouldn’t be your fault. We’re all a team, the restaurant isn’t just run by one person. You’re key, but so are we all.”

“You saw how I perform under stress today,” Eames says with clenched teeth. “It was utter _shite_. Could’ve come out of a _fucking_ Betty Crocker cookbook. It’s like everything just… clouds my head and makes nothing make sense at all. Now imagine on Michelin night when I’m dealing with all of _that_ on top of the knowledge that Mal might fucking _lose_ it if I fail. If I fail _her_.”

Arthur feels himself deflate, and they both fall into silence.

Eames averts his eyes, his shoulders tight and his foot jittering beneath the table, so Arthur drops it. He has four months to convince Eames that whatever happens won’t be entirely his fault, whether success or failure, and that he’s not alone. But right now, he has Eames _in his apartment_ eating decent Chinese take-out and listening to the small drops of rain start to splatter against his windows. Arthur watches as Eames’s eyes drift over in that direction, toward the living room. He straightens.

“What’s that box in the corner?”

Arthur glances over and chuckles. His living room, though mostly finished now, still has reminders of his procrastination littered around. 

“It’s supposed to be a DVD cabinet. I’ve been putting it off for months… it’s getting ridiculous.”

“Well where are you keeping all of your DVDs now?”

“In a box under my bed.”

Eames makes a scandalized noise, standing abruptly and clasping his hands together like a mad man on a mission.

“Well that just won’t do, will it?” He stretches his arms above his head as he heads to the dust-covered box shoved off in the corner. Arthur’s eyes fall onto the way the muscles in his back move under his shirt and he swallows, following.

And that’s how Arthur finds himself on the floor with Eames an hour later, sipping wine out of mugs (because he hadn’t had a chance to do his dishes) and trying to piece together sheets of plywood with small metal bits.

“So you’re telling me your ex left you for a _tax accountant_?”

Arthur nods with a tight, wry smile, accidentally jamming his thumb between the Allen wrench and a shelf. He sticks his throbbing thumb in his mouth and shrugs.

“He said he couldn’t be with someone who _had no future_. In his mind, being a somm was kind of like being a rotating exhibit at an art museum. That I’d be at one restaurant until they got bored of me and kicked me out. It wasn’t stable enough for him. He always wanted the whole white picket fence, two-point-five kids and a dog lifestyle. Like all the guys that bring cheese to Ina Garten’s garden parties on _Barefoot Contessa_.”

“The East Hampton Gays.” Eames nods gravely before quirking an eyebrow. ”And tasting wine for a living didn’t mesh with that fairytale too well, I take it?”

Arthur shoves the head of the Allen wrench back into the screw, gritting his teeth as he twists roughly.

“Guess not.”

“Well he’s missing out, isn’t he?” When Arthur looks up, he finds that Eames has stopped hammering the corner pieces he was working on, and is instead smiling over at him, his mug clasped in both hands. “What a boring _arse_. Tasting wine as a career is a fairytale in itself. So is cooking. Both are hard at times, but both are so rewarding. Dining, eating, drinking… it’s something we all have to do to survive. _We_ just make it an experience. We take something that’s a necessity of life and make it _mean_ something to people. Dining is… communal. It’s memorable and personal and subjective and _lustful_ and romantic. It’s the _joie de vivre_. Being an accountant? Necessary, I suppose, for a functional capitalist society. But where’s the _life_ in it? Where’s the passion? The romance?” Eames lets out a microburst of laughter, tossing his head back and staring up at the ceiling like he’s looking right through it, and the clouds, up at the stars. Soon his eyes land back on Arthur. They’re impossibly softer, somehow.

“You’re fascinating, Arthur. You’re an _adventure_. If he thought you were anything less, it’s utter bollocks. It’s his loss. If he had half a brain in his head, he’d have done whatever it took to hold on to you like it was the end of the bloody world.”

Arthur feels like the floor gives out from under him, leaving him suspended in mid-air. And in front of him is Eames.

 _Eames_. It’s like Arthur’s seeing him again for the first time: the squareness of his jaw, his plump wine-stained lips, the way his eyes seem to change color with whatever he was wearing, the scar on his right brow and the one on his chin. Arthur notices how he recites these hyper-bright details in his mind as if they’re the lines of a play he’d spent hours memorizing as a teenager. He realizes that he doesn’t even have to be _looking_ at Eames to know every small quirk of Eames’s face, every defining feature or mark.

For months now, Eames has been like a song stuck in Arthur’s head he never meant to learn the lyrics to but did anyway. A song he wakes up with in his head like background music and hums whenever he gets distracted.

Eames has been _there all along_ , only Arthur’s been too much of a fool to realize it until now. Too much of a fool to realize that Eames knows as much about wine now as he’s ever going to know, and Arthur’s learned as much about Eames’s cooking as _anyone_ will ever know, so their Thursdays aren’t mutually beneficial tutoring sessions anymore. They haven’t been for a while. Maybe they never were to begin with. Eames didn’t come to see Arthur tonight because he wanted a wine lesson. He wanted Arthur’s company. He wanted Arthur’s advice, his comfort. He wanted _Arthur_.

In a moment of need, of despair, he wanted Arthur. Above Ariadne or Yusuf or any of the hordes of other people that flock around him, trying to get a piece of him, trying to be a part of his life at all cost. No – he came to Arthur.

The enigma that is Eames, the riddle he could never quite figure out, unfurls in front of his eyes. At least part of it. The part that has nothing to do with the food but everything to do with the way Eames looks at him like he’s the first sight of land after months lost at sea; the way sometimes Eames will say something and it’ll make Arthur feel like he’s being electrocuted on a molecular level.

“Eames,” he says, for lack of knowing anything else to say.

“Arthur,” Eames replies.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Arthur’s climbing over what little they’ve managed to assemble of the DVD cabinet, taking Eames’s dumbstruck face into his hands and kissing him with everything he has.

It doesn’t fully sink in that Eames is kissing him in return until he feels warm hands slide up his back. Through the thin material of his t-shirt, he can feel callouses on the tips of his fingers, the knuckles and the center of his palm, presumably from various positions of resting a carving knife or a peeler. Eames tastes like the wine they’ve been drinking: full-bodied and fruity with an oaky, floral aftertaste. Arthur feels a shift in gravity and realizes that he’s being pulled into Eames’s lap, a bit haphazardly, but the worn hands find their way to his hips and lift him seamlessly over the jagged edges of wood below, nestling them torso-to-torso.

“Arthur,” Eames says again, this time in a slightly wrecked voice against his lips. “ _Darling_ , if you’ve any idea how long I’ve-”

“I’m an idiot,” Arthur says in a flood of words. “I’m an idiot and I’m sorry I didn’t realize sooner…”

“No apologies,” Eames says sternly between deep kisses. “Just this. Right now. Just _this_.”

Arthur doesn’t argue. He continues not arguing when he becomes vaguely aware of Eames pulling him to his feet and leading him toward the open awaiting door of his bedroom.

Then Eames makes him forget how to argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ye be warned: Drama incoming... :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter includes gratuitous legal substance use (alcohol) and mentions of mental illness.

“You guys have been together _one month_ and you’re already an embarrassingly clingy old married couple.” Arthur can see Ariadne’s pout from across the room where he’s sitting on the floor, trying to no avail to light a fire in his fireplace. He scoffs, striking his sixth match and trying to ignite the newspapers he’s placed under the log.

“That isn’t true. Old couples argue all the time about asinine things and never have sex.”

“Not _that_ kind of old married couple. You’re the kind that can’t survive without the other and are so overly cute it’s vomit-worthy.” She sets down her wine glass and tosses her hands up at the look he gives her. “Don’t get me wrong! I’m super happy you two finally decided to stop being complete utter _morons_ and admit your undying love for each other – and god knows Eames needed someone to thrust out all his pent-up kitchen frustrations with – but you two are _gross_. In the best way possible.”

Arthur sits back in victory as the tiny flickering flame he’d been nursing for twenty minutes finally takes to the logs above it, sparking up into somewhat of a small fire. He wonders vaguely what his life’s become for someone to be gossiping about his relationship like this. His _relationship_ … that, in itself, seems so bizarre to him still. Glancing back at Ariadne, he lifts a challenging eyebrow.

“What are you even talking about? We’re not an overly affectionate couple in public. We’re not _all over each other_. We rarely even see each other at work. None of you even noticed until Eames turned down your Great British Bake-Off viewing plans because we had a date.”

“Oh don’t give me _that_. You two are obvious. Maybe you aren’t practicing karma sutra on the dessert tray or anything, but you’re both always making eyes at each other and smiling like fiends whenever the other is mentioned in passing… it’s cute, but it’s ridiculous. _Also,_ the fact – which is why I brought this up in the first place – that Eames is in London for a week and you look like you’re ready to light your own funeral pyre.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and snatches his wine glass off the coffee table, but he doesn’t exactly deny it. Because that would be _lying,_ something Arthur tends to avoid unless completely necessary. Instead, he looks up at the gaudy Christmas movie blaring from his flat screen and lets out an unintentional long-suffering sigh.

Before, when Eames traveled (because, even though it’s easy for Arthur to forget, Eames is famous and that comes with strings pulling in every direction at any given time), Arthur didn’t give it too much thought. Thursday was _their_ night, and if Eames missed Thursday because he was needed for a knife commercial in Japan, well, Arthur was bummed, but there was always _next_ Thursday. Beyond that, when Eames would ‘nip off’ for a day or two, or a weekend, Arthur would hardly even notice. The rest of the workweek was just passing glimpses, maybe a text or two, a smile through the swinging door during the dinner rush. The menu would be set for the days he was absent, and Ariadne would command the kitchen ruthlessly, and it was like he was never really gone at all.

But Eames traveling _now_ is different. Because even though for the last month Thursday nights are still reserved for _them_ , for good wine and food, every day has been about _them_ in some way or another. Regardless of the marginally increased time they spend together at the restaurant (Arthur’s learned to become quite the expert mushroom-picker and Eames has suddenly developed an interest in learning about the rare labels in the cellar…), Arthur finds for at least four days out of the week, when he’s not spending nights in Eames’s king sized bed, Eames is in his. And it’s _not_ because Arthur’s a sex fiend or anything, but (as he argues to himself every time they do it) it’s just impractical for either of them to drive home in the middle of the night, and it’s winter now, which means it’s _cold_ outside, so having another warm body in the bed just seems _practical_. Why go home and freeze to death alone in their separate beds when they can just stay together and most certainly _not_ freeze to death? Duh, logic. 

But now Eames is in London to be a guest-judge on some cooking show for three days, and then is staying an extra four for Christmas with his family, and Arthur can’t help but feeling like something’s _wrong_. He can’t shake it. He figures it must be what withdrawals are like.

As if the universe suddenly decides to back-up Ariadne’s point, his phone buzzes in his pocket and he nearly drops his wine glass to fish it out.

“See, _this_ is what I mean. Pathetic.”

“Stop complaining. If Eames and I had never happened, you’d never have come over to force me into social interaction to gauge whether or not I was good enough for him, and we’d never have become actual friends.”

“Oh, we would’ve,” Ariadne purrs, tossing her legs over the arm of Arthur’s sofa. “We like all the same authors and we both have extremely _dry_ senses of humor. The _real_ question is: why do either of us associate with _Eames_ , the human embodiment of a ‘knock-knock’ joke?”

“You’ve got me there.” Arthur chuckles as he opens up the text.

_‘just finished shooting. bloody waste of time but i got a free mojito out of it. headed to my parents’ now. miss u. what’re u up to?’_

Ariadne groans dramatically at the smile on his face.

Arthur’s never felt like this in his life before. He’s felt passionately about significant others, sure. He’s even been in love before, he thinks. But what he’s experiencing with Eames is like a delayed overreaction. After months and months of lusting after someone, _yearning_ for someone, and not even _realizing it_ , the revelation of Eames has been like finally breathing after holding your breath to the point of unconsciousness. And now Arthur’s, quite frankly, addicted to oxygen.

And Eames feels the same way about him, Arthur knows. He’s so used to being set aside, tucked into the periphery of his previous significant others, until he becomes furniture. Just another fixture in their lives, nothing special, nothing too worthwhile. It’s because, he knows, he’s always been horribly bad at expressing his emotions. After his last boyfriend dumped him, Arthur figured that dating him must be like dating cardboard. The way Eames looks at him, however, makes Arthur want to micromanage all of his actions to make sure that Eames _knows_ how he feels. If Arthur’s furniture in Eames’s life, he’s a beloved centerpiece.

He replies:

_‘Hanging out with Ariadne. It’s freezing, I lit a fire, we’re going to watch Love Actually because apparently December 17 th counts as Christmas.’ _

He sends it and immediately sends another.

 _‘I miss you too._ ’

“Come back up to the couch so we can cuddle while I cry about how everyone has someone to love this Christmas except for me,” Ariadne whines, and Arthur rolls his eyes dramatically and obliges. She nestles into his side.

“Maybe if you’d just ask Yusuf out instead of waiting for something to happen…”

“How _boring_.”

“Love’s sometimes boring.”

“Not when it’s deep, passionate, crazy love. Love’s only boring when you settle.”

Arthur looks back up at the movie just in time for Andrew Lincoln to confess his undying love for Kiera Knightly silently through poster boards, Bob Dylan-style, and smiles. He’d started to worry about moving too fast and considered attempting to resist Hurricane Eames turning his life inside out, because that’s always what he’s known. He used to judge his friends growing up that moved too quickly in their relationships, and often found a sick sense of validation when they inevitably crashed and burned.

As Andrew Lincoln holds up his final card, ‘Merry Christmas’, accepting a fate of a future without the love of his life, Arthur puts a stake in the ground and refuses to let that happen to them. Refuses to let them fall apart. Hurricane Eames is a storm he can weather, wants to weather, until the not-so-bitter end. And they’re adults – they can go as fast as they want. Arthur just has to hang on for dear life.

“You’re right.” Arthur downs the rest of his wine and smiles, feeling the heat from the fireplace warm his toes as he pours himself a new glass.

“Tell me this,” Ariadne says after a long while, when the credits roll, glancing up at him with a smirk. “Have you at least figured Eames out yet? Food-wise, I mean.” Arthur had confessed to Ariadne the impossible nature of Eames’s cooking on his second week on the job. He regrets that, now.

“Not at all,” he says, looking down into his glass of wine, swirling it and watching as the rosy trails of liquid leave a brief film on the glass before disappearing.

No, Eames is still (mostly) a mystery to him. But Arthur knows now that if he cracked all of Eames’s secrets, then there’d be nothing left to discover. Boring. And love’s only boring when you settle.

Ariadne cackles evilly, tipping back the rest of her wine.

 

 

 

 

The only reason Eames finds out about Arthur’s birthday is because he’s with Arthur when he opens his mailbox the day after Christmas. Arthur had just picked him up from the airport, goading him the entire car ride home to tell him about his Christmas with his parents, with Eames much more interested in hearing about how Arthur spent Christmas marathoning all seven Star Wars movies;

 (“ _The Empire Strikes Back_ is far superior a film, but I don’t actually mind the new one.”

“You kidding me? I bloody love _Return of the Jedi_.”

“Wait, seriously? Even with the ewoks?”

“Oh hush, you. I love those little demon teddy bears. It’s my entire childhood”).

The conversation continues all the way into the mailroom of Arthur’s apartment complex, but fizzles out when Arthur actually lays eyes on it. He stares down at the large blue envelope with his mother’s lacy handwriting sprawled across the front in confusion before it dawns on him.

“What’s that, love?” Eames looks up from his phone, leaning against the wall of mailboxes next to him.

Arthur tears it open, pulling out a gaudy over-sized paperboard card with a wine glass on the front with the words ‘ _You’re just like a good bottle of wine’_. On the inside, it reads in bold red letters: _‘You only get better with age!’_

Under that, there’s the same handwriting that was scrawled on the envelope: ‘ _Happy birthday, sweetheart. We missed you for Christmas this year, but know you’re having the time of your life. Make sure to call soon, okay? We love you! Mom, Dad, and Beth_ ’

“Birthday card from my folks.” Arthur hands it over and sorts through the rest of his mail, tossing the junk into the recycling bin near the door.

When he turns back, Eames is gaping at him, aghast.

“Your… birthday? Why didn’t you tell me? Did I miss it?!”

“No. I just… honestly, I forgot. I tend to do that. I don’t know, I don’t want to make it a big deal.” Arthur shrugs and motions for Eames to follow him over to the stairs.

“When do I ever make a deal?” Eames whines, and Arthur gives him a look. He grins in response. “Okay, so when is it?”

“New Year’s Day.”

Eames squawks excitedly.

“A New Year’s baby! I _knew_ you were a Capricorn.”

“Listen.” Arthur rounds on him as soon as they’re inside his apartment, setting his keys down on the table and crossing his arms. “I don’t have any plans, and I’d like to spend it with you, but can we just do something… _low-key_?”

Eames smiles genuinely with only a faint glimmer of humor around the edges, Arthur’s relieved to see, and wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist, tugging him in close. “Of course.”

Arthur smiles and slides his hands up Eames’s back, under his leather jacket, feeling how his skin’s still chilled from the motorcycle ride they just took. Eames leans in and plants a kiss just below Arthur’s ear before he stills.

“Bollocks,” he mutters. “I’ve just realized…”

“What?” Arthur pulls back to look at him.

“New Year’s Day is absolutely one-hundred percent yours. New Year’s Eve, though… there’s a huge staff party. Surely you’ve heard about it.”

Arthur considers. He does remember getting the email, but he’s so used to ignoring most emails from Cobb unless they’re labeled ‘urgent’. Cobb has a foul habit of sending links to articles no one cares about or pictures of cats. If he sent an email for a party invite, it likely went unopened.

“Not really,” Arthur admits. Eames laughs and heads into the kitchen, swinging his hips, pouring himself a glass of water. Arthur follows like a moth in front of a lamppost.

“Everyone makes a fuss about it every year. They started it a couple years back when they reopened… they close down Limbo and deck out the whole place in decorations. Dom even hires a DJ and gets someone _else_ to cater, thank god. And every year there’s a theme… I believe this year it’s ‘Wild West’ or something… cowboys and bandits and whatnot. Basically everyone dresses up and gets proper smashed.”

Arthur frowns, lifting an eyebrow.

“We close on New Year’s Eve? Isn’t that like… sacrilege in the fine dining community?”

“Yes absolutely, but Dom’s such a party animal and so eager to please us all I hardly think he cares. Plus, it’s an opportunity for him to kiss the arse of all the investors. Anyway, I’d certainly ditch, except I promised Ariadne I’d be there to act as a buffer between her and Yusuf, and I also…”

“Eames.” Arthur places a firm hand on his shoulder. “You want to go. There isn’t anything wrong with that. You’re not stepping on my toes or anything, for pete’s sake. New Year’s _Day_ is my birthday, not Eve.”

Eames shuffles, tugging at his bottom lip with his teeth and peering up at him from under his thick blonde lashes. “I was kind of hoping I’d have a hot date this year…” He smiles coyly, reaching up to trace the veins on Arthur’s wrist with his thumb. “If you’re up for it.”

Arthur bites at his lip, staring dumbly into Eames’s mossy-stone eyes, before quirking an eyebrow playfully, a smirk forming on his lips.

“Of course. Can’t let you have a _rootin’ tootin’_ good time without me.”

Eames lights up and grabs both of Arthur’s hands, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

“And then the next night, it’ll just be the two of us, mm? I’ll cook you anything of your choice and we’ll have lots and _lots_ of marvelous birthday sex. Deal?”

“Deal,” Arthur replies without hesitation because… _duh_ , logic.

 

 

 

 

Arthur’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen this many frills and spurs since he watched _The Three Amigos_ when he was seventeen.

Eames wasn’t lying about everyone going all out and then some for this party. Everyone – the kitchen staff, the custodial staff, the wait staff, partners, management, investors, and various guests – are all decked out entirely in period-accurate (but not racist or culturally insensitive, as specified very clearly in the amendment email Ariadne – a proud Arizonan with native blood – sent out) old west costumes. Cowboys and cowgirls, farmers, women in either tight-fitting, flared-out dresses with fishnets or floor-length debutant dresses all make the room impossibly crowded, and Arthur isn’t positive that he even knew that this many people were associated with Limbo. The place itself is nearly unrecognizable. As if the wagons and cacti out front aren’t enough, the entire restaurant’s been decorated immaculately like a saloon straight out of the old spaghetti westerns Arthur’s dad used to watch religiously. Someone’s pounding out melodies on an out-of-tune upright piano while the DJ sets up.

“Lovely,” Eames comments, trying intentionally to underplay the excitement in his voice. Arthur just smiles, adjusts the ten gallon hat on his head, and pulls him inside.

They’re immediately met at the entrance by Ariadne, dressed as some sort of a female Jesse James with a bandana around her neck and two fake guns holstered at her hips.

“Howdy!” she giggles, pecking each of their cheeks. She freezes as she looks at them, her mouth going slack. “Oh my _god_ , are you in a _couple’s costume_?!”

Arthur glances down at himself, dressed as a sheriff in a sleek waistcoat with a shiny badge on his chest, and supposes that, yeah, it kind of does match Eames’s bandit outfit: mask, fake sack of stolen cash, and all.

Eames just grins deviously, scooping Arthur into his side by the waist and planting a kiss on his cheek.

“Well it makes sense. I did _steal_ his heart, didn’t I?”

Arthur groans loudly and rolls his eyes so hard he feels the warning signs of eye strain.

“Keep up with that and I really will lock you up somewhere, _partner_.”

Eames just grins like the Cheshire cat and nips at his ear. Arthur only puts up a vague attempt to pull away from his affection. Ariadne still looks thunderstruck.

“Old married couple,” she mouths at Arthur just as Cobb appears behind her, sporting a vastly-oversized hat and hideous red boots, looking much more reminiscent of Woody from _Toy Story_ than something actually authentic.

“Arthur! You’re late! Do you think you could go down and pick out one of the rare label champagnes for midnight?”

Arthur snorts, already weighing the options in his head against the strong-scented Mexican food he can already smell from the kitchen, but Eames holds steadfast onto his waist.

“Dom, are you seriously going to make Arthur _work_ tonight?”

Cobb stammers, getting that short-circuited panicked look on his face he gets when he doesn’t know how to handle a situation, before he settles on a harsh squint. Arthur shakes his head.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind.”

A rush of relief washes over Cobb’s pale face.

“No rush, its only nine. We just _have_ to pop one open at midnight! It’s tradition.”

Now it’s Ariadne’s turn to roll her eyes. Eames glances behind Cobb’s shoulder.

“Is your wife around?”

Cobb glances around. “Somewhere around here! You have to see her dress, it’s custom and it suits her so well…”

“I’m sure we’ll find her,” Ariadne interjects, grabbing Arthur and Eames’s hands, tugging them away from Cobb. “And I’ll make sure Arthur gets your stupid bubbly later. Just let them enjoy themselves first!” She leads them through the crowd to the drink table which, to Arthur’s horror, is covered in at least twenty bottles of tequila without a single wine bottle in sight. The tequila bottles are almost obscene; all different shapes and sizes, some long and some short. One is made out of opaque blue glass and has a three foot twisted stem, one shaped like a skull, and one with a _worm_ in it. Ariadne snatches one of the more normal-looking bottles and pours out three shots into tall, slim, salt-rimmed shot glasses, snatching up a few lime wedges.

“Oh,” Arthur says, “I don’t…” He stops himself. It’s New Years Eve, what better time to attempt to drink something other than wine? Now’s not the time for any sort of sommelier holier-than-thou attitude.

He feels Eames eyeing him curiously when he takes the shot glass and the lime wedge.

“What’s the order of this?” he asks, trying to wrack his brain back to his short time at UCLA watching _other_ irresponsible college students do this.

“Tequila first, then lick the salt, then bite into the lime.”

“No, love, it’s salt-tequila-lime. Really, a girl from Arizona? I’m disappointed.”

Ariadne laughs wickedly through her glare.

“Fine, salt first. And do it fast or it’ll feel like you’re getting punched in the face.”

Arthur stares down at the tube of amber liquid in his left hand and the lime wedge in his right and takes a deep breath, not exactly knowing what to expect.

“Cheers, then!” Eames clinks his own shot glass against Arthurs’s. Arthur watches as he licks the salt around the rim before quickly, with one jerky motion, tosses his head back with the glass to his lips, exposing the long lines of neck, the small bruise Arthur’s mouth had left under his ear, the slope of his Adam’s apple. He bites into the lime with a wince, a giggle rumbling somewhere in his broad chest. And Arthur really shouldn’t be turned on right now, but he is, so instead of letting his mind wander further in _that_ direction, he imitates Eames, running his tongue around the salted rim of the class before tilting his head back and letting the liquid flow steadily into his mouth.

The first sensation is burning. Like swallowing liquid fire, something scorching his touch and pallet. Then, it feels like he’s swallowing pure light.

When he finishes, his eyes are wide and Eames has to nudge his hand to remind him to bite down on the lime, which he does, and finds it almost an insult to the substance that came before it.

“What’d you think?” Eames asked, reaching up to gently brush a spare drop away from the corner of Arthur’s lips. Arthur blinks.

“It was like… drinking liquid gold.” Arthur says, his voice still a bit hoarse. Eames grins.

“I _knew_ you’d like it. Next I need to have you try a good nutty scotch.”

“And vodka,” Ariadne chirps. Eames gasps.

“ _Never_. Vodka’s glorified nail polish remover.”

“Cedric Eames you take that _back_ , vodka is the elixir of the sweet, sweet Russian potato gods!”

“Ugh, when will you grow out of your tacky ASU college years, little one?”

“ _Hey!_ ”

Meanwhile, neither of them seem to notice Arthur pouring himself another shot and sipping it, and then _two more_ , adjusting to the flavor, rewiring his brain to accept the flavor of an alcohol that isn’t wine on his tongue. It’s astringent and sharp but ethereal, in a way. He can’t seem to wrap his brain around how a room temperature liquid can physically feel _warm_ as it slides down his throat. He can’t get enough of it. He wants to learn everything about it all of the sudden, the way it’s supposed to taste, how it’s made, the process of how it ferments…

They do notice, however, when he finishes his fourth shot glass and moves to one of the fancier bottles to pour out his fifth. _For science_ , he tells himself sternly, before tilting the bottle.

“Oi, slow down there, gorgeous. Haven’t you heard the little song? _One tequila, two tequila, three tequila…_ ”

“Floor,” Ariadne adds helpfully as she leans a bit too heavily to the left, the last shot apparently already taking effect on her tiny person.

“But I don’t-” Arthur starts.

“This is also your first experience with tequila. Just sip and take it slow, yeah?” Eames presses his lips to Arthur’s temple and Arthur nods, finding a solo cup and dumping the contents of his shot glass in it to make it easier to drink it slowly instead of all at once.

 _I don’t get drunk_ , Arthur tells himself when the world starts spinning pleasantly, and he feels like he’s standing on the deck of a ship during a very tumultuous storm.

 _I don’t… get drunk_ , Arthur tells himself when jokes he would normally _maybe_ quirk his lip at become hilarious, to the point where he’s forced to hide his face while he laughs because he isn’t used to being this ridiculous around people he knows professionally. Or even personally. Anyone, really.

 _I don’t fucking get drunk!!!_ Arthur tells himself when he dances with reckless abandon, yelling out all the words to Saint Motel’s ‘My Type’, which he doesn’t even realize he knows but is also on his workout playlist, all the while getting much _handsier_ with Eames than he’d normally be caught dead doing in front of others.

 _I don’t… fuck… wow… get… drunk_ , Arthur tells himself as he stands by the wall somewhere around eleven-thirty, leaning a bit too heavily against it, alone because Yusuf arrived dragged Eames away to try and convince the DJ to play ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, Ariadne skipping off behind them.

It’s then that he finally gives in and accepts that this, _this_ , is what drunk feels like. Maybe he’s even been on the verge of it before, _maybe_ , but never like this. His hooded gaze slides across the room until he finds Eames and he smiles warmly, stupidly, unable to stop himself.

Then, he feels someone slide up beside him. Glancing to the side, he finds a man dressed like a gangster in an extravagant costume, with coattails and an expensive-looking fedora. He’s supposed to be a bootlegger, he thinks vaguely. Not _exactly_ sticking to the theme.

“Mr. Cohen,” the man says in a crisp Japanese accent. “Nice to see you again.”

 _Shit_ , Arthur thinks, because he’s only met Saito, the primary investor and business partner of Limbo, once, and it was before he even started at the restaurant. Saito spends most of his time in Osaka and Tokyo, managing the ten or so world class restaurants he funds around the world. He’s the man that essentially writes Arthur’s paychecks, and now Arthur is drunk for the first time in his life and Saito is standing beside him.

 _Don’t overcompensate_ , some Sober Arthur voice in the back of his mind says very clearly. _Don’t make it obvious by trying to make it not obvious._

“Mr. Saito,” Arthur offers him an easy smile. “Glad you could make it.”

“My schedule allowed for me to attend this year, which I am very pleased about. I like to _check in_ on my investments.”

Arthur may be drunk, but he isn’t too drunk to notice the way Saito’s eyes scan across the room and land directly on where Eames is talking boisterously with the DJ when he says ‘investment’. Arthur furrows his brow briefly before smoothing it, trying to pull off nonchalant.

“I hear from Mallorie that you and Mr. Eames are… seeing each other.” Saito says it in a smooth, low voice and it makes Arthur shutter.

“Yes, but it doesn’t affect how we-”

“I do not look poorly at the situation, Mr. Cohen. Quite the opposite. I hope that you can, in a way, act as an anchor to him.”

Arthur tries very hard to focus fully on Saito’s face, feeling a heavy-set frown form on his lips.

“Anchor? I think… I think he’s pretty happy here…”

“You know,” Saito rounds on him, hands crossed cleanly across his chest, “he contacted me several months ago about possibly ending his contract early. He said he was just ‘flirting’ with the idea, but that he’d had an offer from somewhere else he found almost impossible to refuse.”

Arthur’s mouth forms around some word he can’t quite manage to get out, so Saito continues.

“He didn’t tell me who, of course. Strictly confidential on his part, just a warning… appreciated, because finding a new chef with as much _gravitas_ is quite the challenge. But I have many connections. As it turns out, the offer was from a three-star London restaurant owned by my greatest competitor, Maurice Fischer.  The restaurant, called Catharsis – ridiculous name, but those are popular now, I suppose – is managed by Maurice’s eldest son, Robert, who Mr. Eames knew as a younger man in Paris, I believe.”

Arthur feels the thrumming sensation of hard liquor in his veins start to quiet, the high wearing off and the headache setting in. Everything’s still too muddled, however. The idea that Eames considered _leaving_ …

 _No_. He straightens his back and stares forward, unflinching. Maybe once, a while ago, Eames _had_ considered leaving. But things are different now. Now Limbo’s well on its way to a third Michelin star. Now Eames has roots here in Bordeaux (an _herb garden_ , for fuck’s sake). And Eames has _Arthur_.

Freddie Mercury’s crooning voice seeps out from the overhead speakers, signaling Eames and Yusuf’s success.

“I don’t think he’ll be leaving any time soon,” Arthur crosses his arms, watching as Eames finishes his conversation and scans the room for him. When Eames spots him, he squints his eyes a bit at Saito, not in a hateful way but in a… curious way.

“I certainly hope you are right, Mr. Cohen. It would be a great loss to us all.”

Eames makes it to them just as Saito pushes off from the wall.

“Mr. Eames,” he greets coolly. “Happy New Year.”

“Same to you, Saito. Cheers.”

Eames watches warily as he walks off, and Arthur slumps against his side, his cowboy hat falling off of his head.

“Eames,” he says, looking up at him, “Remember when I said I couldn’t get drunk? I was wrong.”

Eames looks down at him and laughs heartily, his own eyes a little blearily and soft around the edges from the tequila. “My Arthur, diplomatic even when he’s completely bladdered. Yes, darling. You are thoroughly tequila’d. I’m proud. You alright?”

“Fine.” Arthur takes a deep breath and considers asking Eames outright whether or not he has intentions to leave. It’s paranoid, he knows, but he’s drunk, which is an excuse enough to be paranoid.

The rational half of his brain takes over again, pushing what Saito said straight to the back of his mind. Eames is _here_ , and Eames isn’t leaving. Eames wouldn’t leave. Eames has a cottage in the woods, and Eames has friends, and Eames has an herb garden, and Eames has _him_.

The rational half of his brain also reminds him of other things.

“Shit,” he says, standing straight. “What time is it?”

Eames looks down at his watch.

“Quarter till midnight.”

“Shit,” Arthur pulls away from Eames, steadying himself. “I’ve got to go get that champagne.”

“I’ll accompany you,” Eames goes to move after him, to place a solid hand on the small of his back, but Arthur shakes his head.

“It’s fine, I’ll be back in five minutes. Go mingle.”

Eames eyes him carefully and nods slowly, apparently coming to the conclusion that he’s sober enough to function solo. “If you aren’t, I’ll assume you’ve fallen down the cellar stairs and need immediate rescuing.”

“Good thinking.” Arthur turns and makes his way through the crowd, trying to focus briefly on the blur of faces greeting him as he passes by. Finally he makes it to the old creaky oak door leading down to the cellar and sighs in relief when he feels the cool wood against his palms, pushing it forward.

He closes it behind himself, his throbbing head grateful for the sudden hush of all the commotion happening behind him. The old Edison lights above buzz to life, and Arthur descends carefully, making sure each successive step is placed firmly on the step itself before he moves to take another.

When he reaches the dusty floor, he chuckles to himself, taking some pride in the fact that he won’t, in fact, need to be rescued. But when he turns the corner toward the wall lined with champagne, he stops dead in his tracks, realizing very quickly that he’s not alone.

A woman with a curly chestnut bob and a long, beautiful green dress that flares out at the bottom, complete with lace frills and a floppy hat, stands in the middle of the corridor facing away from him. It’s Mal, his foggy brain realizes quickly. He takes a step forward, and she doesn’t move but simply turns her head to the side, revealing her delicate profile. She looks beautiful and pale, barely illuminated by the dim bulb above her head. Arthur startles a bit when he realizes that before he’d turned on the lights, she was likely down here in pitch blackness.

“Did you know,” she says softly, “that winemaking goes back twenty generations in my family? On my mother’s side, of course. We haven’t produced in a good sixty years, though… not since our vines were killed by blight. But this collection… it’s profound, is it not?”

She turns fully toward him, her eyes glossy in the dim lights, holding a bottle of what Arthur immediately recognizes as the most rare, expensive bottle in the entire cellar with violently shaky hands and a loose grip. It’s a Bordeaux from the eighteenth century and he winces, his instincts kicking in despite the drunkenness to protect the bottle at all costs, as well as to protect _her_ at all costs…

Stepping forward slowly, he speaks in an even voice.

“Very profound. The best I’ve ever been in the presence of.”

Mal stares at him blankly, as if she’s staring straight through him, but her deep red lips turn up in a smile regardless.

“These bottles… they’re lucky to have a caretaker like you, Arthur.”

Arthur smiles and holds out his hands, ready to dive for it. He knows that if the bottle does drop and break, he’d sooner lick it off the floor than let it go to waste. What a way to start the new year.

“Can I see that, maybe?” he asks cautiously, taking another small step forward. She looks down at the bottle as if she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it. She blinks twice and holds it forward for him.

“Why do I have this?” she asks him as he takes it carefully, placing it back in its slot, as it doesn’t even trust himself holding it, especially not in the state he’s in. “Why am I down here?” she continues.

She stares down at her hands, her lips pulled into a tight line and her eyes beginning to water. Arthur moves quickly to grab the bottle of champagne he decided upon earlier before wrapping a steady arm around her.

“Let’s go back upstairs, okay? You don’t have to rejoin the party, but maybe you need some fresh air. It’s almost midnight.”

“Oui,” she agrees, holding onto his arm with a weak grip. “Fresh air.”

Carefully, he leads her up the cellar stairs, moving at a snail’s pace while he makes sure that both of them make each successive step without slipping. Once they reach the top, she pecks his cheek before drifting away from him, making her way through the party toward the open front doors; her dress gliding over the hardwood in a way that makes her look like she’s floating, her feet never touching the ground. He stares after her, caught between feeling like he’s seen a ghost or some sort of tragic character from an old macabre gothic tale. Same thing, maybe. Maybe not.

Cobb grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around, snatching the champagne from him.

“Perfectly timed, Arthur!” He turns and shouts over the music. “Seven minutes to the New Year, everyone!”

The crowd cheers in appreciation while Cobb disappears to go pour out the champagne. Arthur stares after him, astounded that he hasn’t even stopped to consider where his wife is… hasn’t even the slightest idea of what demons she’s fighting. A warm pair of hands find his shoulders before he can get too angry about it all.

“Are you interested in drinking anymore currently, or…?” Eames purrs in his ear. Arthur shakes his head quickly.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Brilliant. Let’s take a little walk then, shall we?”

Before Arthur knows what’s happening, he’s being whisked out of the restaurant, out through the kitchen and through the back door, and directed toward the grassy hill that leads to the woods.

“Where’re we going?” Arthur asks, shivering a bit uncontrollably with chattering teeth due to a mix of the alcohol in his bloodstream and the cool winter air. Eames wraps a warm arm around him and rubs at his bicep.

“Can’t a man have any surprises?”

“It’s freezing, Eames.”

“We’ll only be outside for a few minutes. You’ll manage.”

Once they’re in the middle of the thick trees and tall grass, Eames leads Arthur away from the direction they usually go to hunt for mushrooms. It’s a couple of minutes of Arthur stumbling on an assortment of damp ferns and tree stumps until they make their way up to a hill which overlooks the city through a halo of pines. Eames checks his watch before tugging Arthur back into him, wrapping his arms around him and pressing a quick kiss to his shoulder.

“Pretty view…” Arthur comments, confused but _warm_ finally, so unwilling to complain.

“Patience, love.”

Arthur takes a deep breath, letting the frigid air expand his lungs.

As if on cue, wisps of light burst up from the city, exploding in the air like neon flowers, bursting and then dissipating into smoke. Red and green and blue and white and gold. Arthur can’t remember the last time he watched fireworks; the last time he wasn’t working on New Year’s Eve.

“Happy birthday, Arthur,” Eames whispers into his ear and Arthur shivers, smiling, feeling suddenly like he and Eames exist exclusively in a vacuum with nothing else around them except the distant pops of gunpowder exploding in frosty air.

His headache, the alcohol, Mal, Saito… all of it dissolves inside of him then, replaced instantly by nothing but warmth. A new year… a new start. Whatever’s in Eames’s past doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in his future. Maybe, just maybe, _he’s_ what Eames’s future looks like now. He turns his head until they’re nose to nose, Eames’s warm alcohol-laced breath caressing his skin.

“And a happy new year,” he mutters before pressing his cold lips to Eames’s, melting back into him.

Everything else can wait.

It’s his birthday, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I spent so much time talking about tequila... I love tequila. Tequila and I are friends. :)
> 
> Also for anyone who wants to listen to the song Arthur was grinding up on Eames during, click [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5C1Bt4k-iA)!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of this chapter, this is officially my longest fic on this website! Whaaaaaat?! Thank you all so much for sticking with me as what was supposed to be a tiny little AU has becoming something much larger. Please read my notes at the end!! xoxo
> 
> (Also, I skip a bit of time in this chapter. It begins at the end of January, and ends around mid-February.)

As he leans against the island in Eames’s kitchen and watches the mostly-nude British man himself prepare him lamb vindaloo, Arthur considers, futilely, how few indulgences he used to allow into his life.

He isn’t usually a man of indulgences, despite the fact that indulgence is technically his career field. Indulgence is _technically_ how he was raised. Wine is certainly an indulgence to most; it’s not necessary to sustain life, it’s more expensive than most drinks, and it’s considered pretty high up on the hierarchy of luxurious things. He _knows_ this, and yet, he tends to lead his life in a ‘no bullshit’ fashion. In the mornings, he drinks his coffee black, only eats out if it’s absolutely necessary, and settles for 200 thread-count sheets when he could probably afford over a thousand. He doesn’t dole out extra money for more television channels, he doesn’t walk over to the bakery across the street from his flat every morning and buy a steaming hot pain au chocolat, and he _doesn’t_ drink wine every night, contrary to popular belief.

Most nights, he does his whole fancy sommelier routine, takes one sip, swishes, and spits it. Sommeliers do a lot of swishing and spitting – it’s garnered quite a few inside jokes and t-shirts with people in the know. His sommelier friends back in the day even used to do spitting competitions at parties. The brief taste of acidic bliss on his tongue is enough of an indulgence normally, he thinks. Just a burst of heaven, then back to no-bullshit. Usually. After long days, or bad days, he makes a b-line for his personal wine rack and has the ability to polish off an entire bottle by himself. But he considers that _necessity_ , mostly. Coping. Research, even.

But it’s Thursday, he tells himself. A bright, frigid end-of-January Thursday after a long workweek, a long work- _month_ really. After his birthday (which consisted of homemade pizza and only leaving the bed to get more wine), the new year brought a fresh rush of foodies and critics to Limbo so they could start compiling their ‘Best Restaurants to Try in the New Year’ lists. And Arthur knew his job wasn’t a walk in the park, like people generally assumed, but he never knew it could be quite as demanding as it had been to pour wine.

So this is allowed. He’s allowed to indulge.

“You know,” Eames glances back at him over his shoulder, his eyes velvety and soft, “I’m glad you didn’t request tikka masala. It isn’t even an Indian dish.”

Arthur pads over behind him, running his hands over Eames’s ribs and pressing himself into him, thinking about how ridiculous they are for having pre-dinner sex. It’s not his fault, though. He hadn’t expected to be met at the door by Eames pulling him in by his tie, snarling something about how the new trousers he’d worn to work should be _‘illegal in all countries including international waters.’_ He didn’t exactly resist, however. It’s _Thursday._ He’s allowed to indulge, right? “Mm? Of course it is. Isn’t it?”

“No, actually,” Eames hums, stirring in some cilantro to the thick brown gravy, “it was invented in England. It’s the bloody _national dish_ of England.”

“The national dish of England isn’t fish ‘n’ chips?” Arthur asks dryly, his voice muffled from where he’s pressing his lips into the slight dip where Eames’s shoulders meet neck.

“Shockingly, no. Nor is it a good ol’ steak and ale, a fry-up, spotted dick, or even a Sunday roast. Guess we’re all more chuffed with the stuff we pillaged from our hundreds of years as the world’s worst colonizers. But yes, chicken tikka is a _British_ dish. In fact, so is curry.  ‘Curry’ never existed in Indian culture until the fucking _Empire_ rolled up and hopped off the boat. It’s basically just a blanket term used to lump all different types of traditional foods together. Indian food is rich in history and every region is vastly different from the next with its cuisine, but when people think of India all they think about is curry, or even worse, _tikka bloody masala_.”

Arthur huffs a laugh against his skin, shaking his head.

“How do you know _everything_ about food?”

Eames brushes a kiss against Arthur’s forehead and smiles.

“Food _is_ my profession, you know. I spent years traveling the globe and learning as much as I could. India was one of my favorite places to visit. I spent six months traveling from the tip all the way up to the Himalayas.”

“Is there anywhere you haven’t been?” Arthur tries to make it sound teasing, but it comes out as a genuine question because it is.

“Antarctica,” Eames hums. “Though I suppose the recipes down there vary from ice to shaved ice to very cold water.”

“Possibly fish.”

“Frozen, raw fish.”

“Sounds delicious,” Arthur mutters, closing his eyes.

There’s silence for a moment; nothing but the soft simmer of the sauce and the spoon dragging against the bottom of the pan. Arthur falls into a bit of a stupor, feeling almost dizzy due to a mixture of the ravenous hunger caused by the thick smell of cardamom, cumin and ghee as well as the way Eames makes him feel all sorts of romantic comedy giddiness. His spell is quickly broken when there’s a knock at the front door. His heart drops mournfully, thinking of Mal interrupting yet another Thursday. But Eames just grins.

“I was feeling lazy so I ordered in some side dishes.” He quickly hands Arthur the spoon before dashing into the living room. Arthur watches him scoop up his discarded shirt and jeans, chucking them on haphazardly before tossing open the door, greeting the delivery man in very brash and friendly French. Eames’s French, Arthur notes, is just as musical and fluid as it should be. He speaks every word like he’s making love to it, and Arthur feels a pang of jealousy in comparison to his own very straight-forward cardboard French, technically perfect but with no life to it whatsoever. He sounds like a Rosetta Stone CD from the 90’s.

He pulls out his corkscrew and moves to open the bottle of wine he brought as Eames returns with a grease-stained paper bag. Arthur’s stomach makes an embarrassing sound when he catches a whiff of whatever’s inside.

“And what lovely vino did you bring me today, hm?” Eames leans over as Arthur removes the cork and sniffs the top of the bottle.

“A rosé from Austria. I thought something as decadent as lamb vindaloo needed something really light and crisp to even out the pallet.”

Eames takes Arthur’s face in his hands and looks at him like he’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen. Arthur feels his cheeks start to burn.

“My brilliant, brilliant Arthur.”

Arthur feels like a deer caught in front of a bullet train. It’s a feeling he isn’t used to: the vulnerableness of Eames’s gaze. There’s nowhere to hide when Eames looks at him like that, and he doesn’t want to.  He wants Eames to know all of his secret passages and passcodes.

It doesn’t mean he knows how to handle when Eames looks at him like this, however. So he reacts by letting out a nervous laugh that is much too high-pitched to sound normal and ducking his head to focus on pulling the cork out in one piece and reaching for the glasses. Eames, being so utterly _Eames_ , seems to just find Arthur’s abject awkwardness adorable and presses a kiss to his forehead, and Arthur wonders how this even is his life.

As they move to the dining table, Eames makes some off-handed remark about how comfortable his new rug by his fireplace looks, and somehow they end sprawled out on it, legs tangled, while they sop up vindaloo and saag paneer and raita with naan and wash it all down with his crisp rosé. Arthur listens to the crackling embers and watches how the flames lick red shadows across Eames’s face and can barely keep the smile off of his lips. He’s been smiling a lot these days.

 _Indulgences_ …

Eames perks up suddenly, the kind of look on his face that means he’s having a _thought_ , which Arthur knows means that the second glass of wine has finally seeped into his bloodstream and he’s feeling philosophical.

“If you could build your _perfect_ future… what would it look like?”

 _"You"_ is the first word that slides into Arthur’s mind, but he has to remind himself that it’s been _two months_ and he still hasn’t convinced himself fully yet that Eames won’t leave him for someone with a boring job and a dog. Instead, he clears his throat and stares down into his wine.

“I want to live somewhere… warm. But not too warm. No snow. Snow’s definitely out.”

Eames snorts, reaching to set down his empty plate on the coffee table behind them. “So moving to Antarctica with me to fulfil my dream of working on every continent, then?”

Arthur follows suit with his own empty plate. “I might make an exception. But you’d have to listen to me complain every minute of every day about how cold I am.”

“Anything else?” Eames swirls the wine around in his glass and glances up at Arthur, his expression guarded.

“Well.” Arthur considers, glancing up toward Eames’s beamed ceiling, pursing his lips. He wonders if Eames is fishing for something. “I want to own my own wine collection. Maybe become a wine archivist. Collect rare labels and preserve them…” He looks up to find Eames still watching him carefully. He clears his throat, making sure to look Eames directly in the eye. “And I want to be… happy. Above all else, really. I used to think that was a selfish thing to wish for, but-”

“It isn’t.” Eames offers him a smile, tilting his wine glass toward him before taking a sip.

“Well what about you?” Arthur asks, mustering up a teasing smile to hide the fact that his cheeks are burning. “What does your future look like, Mr. World Famous Chef?”

Eames exhales a laugh, tossing his head back and humming.

“I’d love to open up my own restaurant one day,” he says softly, pulling his legs into a crossed position and crossing his arms over his chest. “Something quaint and unbothered with ceremony… tucked away somewhere _gorgeous_. And I want to be in control of everything. I want to be close to the ocean so I can go to the fish market every morning and pick everything out. I want to know where my livestock comes from… I want to be close to the butcher. And I want to have my own garden where I grow my own vegetables and fruits and just… make food that’s _wholesome_ and is a culmination of every ounce of life I’ve lived so far. Every bit of passion, of fear, of _love_ I’ve felt. I want people to be able to taste it. And I want it to be my own… not someone else’s.”

Eames turns his eyes back on Arthur then, his expression – having hardened slightly with intensity – softening instantly.

“And, of course, I want to be happy too.” He leans forward, setting down his wine and taking Arthur’s hand in both of his, running his thumb over the pulse point in Arthur’s wrist. “Hypothetically, you know, my restaurant could certainly have a very, _very_ large wine cellar.”

Arthur can’t keep the smile off his face now, and it doesn’t escape Eames, who scoots forward and cups his face, pressing a thumb gently to each dimple, his eyes impossibly soft. Arthur reaches up and takes hold of each of Eames’s wrists, grazing his fingers against his pulse.

“And a vegetable garden outside. And an orchard,” he adds.

“And a gorgeous house nearby with lots of trees and rolling hills and a babbling brook of some sort,” Eames continues.

Arthur inches closer to Eames. “And some damp woods for prime mushroom picking.”

“And a little vineyard.”

Arthur chuckles, shaking his head.

“Afraid I didn’t inherit the winemaking gene.”

“Well what if I wanted to try my hand at winemaking to woo you?” Eames reaches down to slide his hands under Arthur’s ass, pulling him fully into his lap. Arthur grins down at him.

“You don’t have to go to that much effort just to woo me, Mr. Eames.”

Eames grazes his lips across Arthur’s jaw. “Might sweeten the deal a smidge though, yeah?”

Arthur laughs, turning his head to press a kiss to the pad of Eames’s left thumb. “Shut up, Eames.”

“Can’t imagine you wouldn’t be all over me after presenting you with a gorgeous pinot noir I just _made_. I think winemaking is my dream future profession for that reason alone.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and leans forward, deciding to take ‘shutting Eames up’ matters into his own hands.

 

 

 

 

On February 9th, Arthur remembers that Valentine’s Day exists.                                      

The only reason he remembers is because Facebook decides to dredge up an ‘on this day three years ago’ picture he thought he’d deleted of him and his ex on their week-long vacation to Vancouver that was supposed to be romantic and exciting and ended up being frigidly cold and full of bickering. The first thing he does is scroll through his Facebook photos to delete any evidence that his ex actually had a place in his life, and then he panics and calls his sister.

“I’m so glad you called,” Beth says gravely from the other end of the line. “I can’t have you screwing up your relationship with _The_ Cedric Eames because you’re romantically impaired.”

Arthur grits his teeth and pours himself a large glass of wine because _fuck it_ , indulgences are his life now.

“I’m not _romantically impaired_ , whatever that means. I just… don’t do grand gestures.”

“Well he hasn’t run away screaming from you yet, so maybe that’s not what he’s after…”

“You’ve been seeing the same guy for four years… what do _you_ do for Valentine’s Day?”

There’s a pause.

“You mean my _fiancé_ , Arthur?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, for the past couple of years, we’ve been going to the same Italian restaurant near our house we both love, then go home and have bath sex and then fall asleep with the TV on.”

Arthur takes a sip of wine that nearly comes shooting out of his nose. He clasps a hand over his mouth and sets down his wine, trying to stop himself from laughing straight into the phone.

“And I thought _I_ was the romantically impaired one.”

“It _is_ romantic, dumbass. It’s romantic because it’s _us_ , and we love each other and we have fun doing it. Anyway, our first Valentine’s Day was different. He took me out to a really nice restaurant down in San Fran and then we went back to his place and had chocolate covered strawberries and danced and there were flower petals involved and it was _super_ romantic.”

“Mm, you could even say, clichéd maybe?”

“Shut up, Arthur. Anyway, do you have any ideas?”

“No…” he sighs, going over to stand by the window, watching people stumbling home drunk late on a Saturday night. “We don’t really go out on dates because we both work at a two star restaurant. Going out to eat would be like punching in for a shift. He likes to cook for me…”

“So why not do that?”

“Because he always cooks for me. And I always bring wine. And it’s great and wonderful but it isn’t out of the ordinary for us.”

Beth hums and Arthur can almost hear her clicking her fingernails against her thumb, a nervous tic she’s had since she was little.

“Then go out and do something exciting? I’m assuming you won’t be able to do anything on actual Valentine’s Day…”

“You guess correctly.” Arthur scowls. The worst thing about working in the fine dining industry is that holidays are usually sacred working days… the biggest days of the year, in fact, as far as returns go. Cobb’s even insisting on offering special desserts and having a live pianist come in. Eames joked earlier that at least Cobb stops short handing out condoms.

“Well maybe ask for a couple days off the next weekend and drive over to the Alps and go skiing? Or go up to Paris? Take a train to Brussels? Venice?”

Arthur raises an eyebrow and raps his finger against his wineglass, staring down at a car attempting to parallel park on the street below him. “A trip?”

“And you’d eat food on it, presumably, but also do other cute coupley things.”

Arthur wonders if Cobb would give them a whole week off if he and Eames carefully constructed a menu and corresponding wine choices. It all lines up in front of him, then. A mini-tour of Europe. Eames is a man of the world who spent most of his late teens and twenties traveling, and Arthur guesses that maybe he misses it. Maybe he’d want to have _experiences_ with Arthur that expand outside of Limbo and their respective living spaces. And maybe it wouldn’t be frigidly cold or full of bickering.

“Bethany Cohen, you’re a genius.”

“Obviously. Call me and let me know exactly what you decide, okay? And tell Eames I said hi. And that he’s hot, but not in a creepy way. And that when I finally meet him, he has to make me that shrimp thing he made on Jamie Oliver’s show that one time.”

“Right.” Arthur heads back into the kitchen to refill his glass. “When are you visiting me, by the way, so you can tell him all these creepy things yourself?”

“I’ll get some time off this summer. But you’re still aware that my wedding’s in June, correct?”

“How could I forget when you update your Facebook status about it every thirty seconds?”

There’s a pause while Beth draws in a deep breath and Arthur can almost feel her rolling her eyes, just like he does.

“Let me live, dude. He’s going to be your date, right?”

“Haven’t asked but… maybe. If we can both get the time away.”

“All my friends want to meet your hot British celebrity boyfriend.”

Arthur smiles to himself, absently dragging his finger along the rim of the glass.

“Listen, it’s late, I’m gonna turn in.”

“Alright. Good luck on planning your get-away. Later, loser.”

Arthur chuckles. “Later, baby sister.”

He hangs up and tosses his phone onto the counter, scooping up his laptop in the same motion and looking up how one goes about going on a trek through Europe in one week.

While he googles the internet’s opinions on the value of hotels versus air bnb, he considers that he’s _really doing this_. He’d gone on a vacation or two with his ex, sure, but it was after years of dating and Arthur _settling_ , accepting that he was probably going to end up with this guy. And he didn’t, of course, but this… this is new and _terrifying_.

He and Eames, he feels safe to say, are officially out of the so-called ‘honeymoon period’. They’ve moved from the stages of constantly being in awe of each other and never, ever wanting to leave the bed to the part of a relationship that becomes just that: a relationship. It happened last time with his ex as well. He’d just woken up one morning and gone, ‘oh, you’re a fixture in my life now, time for things to calm down a bit and go back to normal, just with you in them’. But that hasn’t happened with Eames. With Eames, they’ve moved into the ‘relationship’ part of their relationship, but Arthur still gets butterflies. He still thinks Eames is the greatest thing he’s ever seen, and he still wants to be around Eames _all the time_.

It’s new because he _knows_ he never felt this way about his ex.

He’s terrified because he’s in love.

He’s _actually_ in love. And booking this trip solidifies it.

The next morning, he intersects Eames on his way to the kitchen at Limbo and tells him his idea. Or rather, Beth’s idea. Eames beams from ear to ear and Arthur feels the affection in his chest making him ache, probably due to the realization of the night before.

“I can’t wait to meet your sister. She’s a bloody genius.”

“I’m sure she’d faint upon hearing you say that.”

Arthur leans up next to Eames against the brick wall while Eames flips through the draft itinerary he put together the previous night, shivering a bit despite the five layers he’s got on. “Do you think Cobb will let us?”

Eames huffs, wrapping an arm around Arthur and rubbing his side to warm him up. “Dom owes me a favor or five. If he makes a fuss I’ll just remind him of this fact… as well as how many times you’ve played nanny to their children while they go off painting the town red. He can babysit his own restaurant for a week.”

Arthur shrugs with one shoulder and nods. “True.”

“I’ll talk to him later. But I’ve got to go get ready for Yusuf to arrive and dump a bunch of dead fish on us… figuratively, of course. Mostly. Anyway, I’ll see you tonight, gorgeous one. ” Eames leans in and presses a quick peck to Arthur’s lips before hurrying into the door behind them. Arthur takes a deep breath, steadies himself, and heads around the side of the restaurant toward the outside cellar door, digging his keys out of his pocket and heading inside.

 

 

 

 

Three days, a long conversation with Cobb, and an entire week’s menu and wine list planned later, Arthur finally books their train tickets and hotel rooms. Eames straddles Arthur’s back and rubs the tense muscles in his shoulders with firm, circular thumb motions while clicks and types, humming with each bit of progress.

“So… no UK?” Arthur asks, craning his neck around to see him. Eames cringes.

“Best not. You’ll have to meet my family eventually, that’s unavoidable. But I need more time to prepare you for how to handle all the passive aggression and underhanded compliments that are actually the insults you think they are. Not _exactly_ my idea of a relaxing, romantic getaway.”

“Duly noted.” Arthur exits out of the booking page for the Chunnel train window, instead focusing on ways to get from Berlin to Amsterdam efficiently. Research is what he does. Research is what he’s good at. So he makes everything as efficient as possible. One night per destination. As little travel-time as possible. Lots of places to stop along the way. He finds ways to avoid the beaten path for several of their days, excluding the popular cities they both want to see. By midnight he has their whole itinerary printed, put in a binder, and color-coded. He looks up to see Eames watching him like he’s just revealed to him that his real name is Clark Kent and proceeded to burn holes into the wall with his laser vision.

“You’re incredibly sexy when you do that,” Eames comments. Arthur lifts an eyebrow.

“Do what?”

“Be all… _Arthurian_.”

Arthur smiles wryly, standing up with the itinerary and carding his fingers through Eames’s hair as he passes, tugging a bit teasingly.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“If by that you mean, ridiculously pro-Arthur being Arthurian and doing Arthurian things, yes, absolutely.”

Arthur exhales a laugh and sets the itinerary down on his kitchen counter before grabbing the cup of tea for Eames he’d set out to steep while he finished up with their trip. He hands it to him and settles into his lap on the couch, tucking his feet up against the warmth of Eames’s leg. It’s a position that should be completely awkward and uncomfortable considering how long Arthur’s legs are, and probably _looks_ awkward and uncomfortable, but is a position Arthur never really wants to move from.

“So you’re positive Cobb’s fine with everything?”

Eames hums thoughtfully, taking a loud slurp of his still-too-hot tea and smacking his lips a bit. “I wouldn’t say ‘fine’ is the word I would use. We’re… at an understanding. Besides, he can’t exactly stop us. We both have holiday time written into our contracts. What’s he going to do, fire the two main reasons people even come to Limbo?”

“I’m sure you’re the only asset he’s truly worried about having to replace,” Arthur answers sheepishly and Eames gives him a brow-furrowed look.

“Now _you’re_ being ridiculous. You don’t think word’s spread about how brilliant you are? Love, ‘send my compliments to the sommelier’ is as common a phrase in our restaurant as ‘to the chef’. There’s a reason we only got two stars last time.”

Arthur groans and leans his head back against the arm of the couch. “Why does everyone say ‘only’ two stars? Like getting _two fucking Michelin stars_ isn’t a big deal or anything.”

“Hear me out. Two stars is fabulous and a huge accomplishment that I’m quite chuffed about but still it isn’t three. It isn’t the best. There’s a reason we didn’t achieve the best. Because my food was missing something. My food was missing _you_. Which is why,” he sets his tea down on a coaster set out on Arthur’s cheap IKEA coffee table that he really doesn’t care about getting cup ring stains on and adjusts, guiding Arthur back into the pillows so he can crawl over him, “we’re going to get that third star next month. Because we’re a team, you and I.”

He thinks he hears a vulnerability in Eames’s voice, reminding Arthur of all the pressure on his shoulders, all the worry that it’ll all come crashing down because of him. But Eames mumbles the last bit against the skin of Arthur’s jaw, right below his ear. The sensitive spot that Eames already _knows_ is sensitive as proven by the ever-present bruise left by his mouth that’s already there. Arthur feels his toes curl despite himself and presses himself up against Eames’s body, his sweatpants doing little to hide how _about this_ he actually is. The worry fades from his mind as quickly as just about everything else.

“Your tea’s gonna get cold,” he says, garbled by both a moan and a gasp as Eames presses back down against him, letting Arthur feel just how _about this_ he is as well.

“Microwaves,” Eames whispers into the shell of his ear, sending a shiver down his spine and turning the skin on his arms into gooseflesh, “exist, darling. Gentle reminder in case you’d forgotten.”

Arthur struggles to speak as his breathing gets heavier, his hands finding themselves on Eames’s lower back as leverage as he ruts against him desperately, entirely lost in Eames despite the silly nature of their foreplay banter. “Isn’t there a special British police force or something that’ll come and arrest you for microwaving your tea?”

“Worth it,” Eames says as he pulls off Arthur’s shirt and drags his tongue down his chest, over his pebbling nipple. “So, _so_ worth it.”

Arthur can’t help but agree that he’d face twenty-five to life with no chance of parole for this. He’d break every law in the book for this. He’d walk barefoot to the ends of the earth for _this_. Because _this_ is quickly becoming his entire world. If life as he knows it is the Earth, then Eames is his apocalypse. Eames is his cataclysmic event. Eames is his meteor. In the sweetest, most beautiful way possible, Eames is the end of the world. And Arthur welcomes it. Arthur wants it to burn.

The weight of that sentiment should scare him, but Eames’s mouth moves lower and he loses the ability to feel fear. Or anything else, really.  _Let it burn_ , he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'll admit, this chapter is pretty much filler. There are some important foreshadowing elements, but the drama I warned everyone of is definitely going to start next chapter. The reason for this is... well, the story has evolved quite a bit from how I initially planned it. There's a _lot_ more nuance and things that happen, so stay tuned! I outlined out the rest of the story last night (a very comprehensive 2500 word outline... sheesh), and as it stands, this fic _should_ have 10 chapters when it's all said and done. I reserve the right to change that, however!!!
> 
> So long story short: sorry this chapter wasn't too exciting and was pretty much nothing but fluff and foreplay. Exciting stuff is coming, I promise!!! 
> 
> In the mean time, you can follow me on [tumblr](www.ophiliad.tumblr.com) for updates and teasers!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to my wonderful betas [sagemb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb) and [mlp_buttons](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mlp_buttons/pseuds/mlp_buttons) for a) offering to beta and b) being awesome betas. 
> 
> Also, a few people were worried about the outcome so I went ahead and added a new tag. Check it out. ;)
> 
>  
> 
> **Added warnings for this chapter: anxiety cw, hospital cw, injury cw**

Mal hugs Eames for an uncomfortable amount of time the night before they leave. She’s dressed in a beautiful tight red dress, her hair in tight waves and her lips a blackened burgundy, looking like some sort of femme fatale who’s wandered off the set of a Noir film and fallen through a wormhole to modern times. Arthur can see her lips moving in rapid fire next to Eames’s ear but can’t make out anything she’s saying. He hears Ariadne sigh beside him, and looks down to find her watching them as well with narrowed eyes.

“You make sure Eames relaxes, okay?” She looks up at him, her tiny lips pursed into a hard line. Arthur blinks but nods. She looks back at them. “She isn’t a very healthy friend to have. Eames is a trooper, but they’ve known each other for ages and I just don’t want him getting sucked down into whatever black hole she’s already drowning in.”

Arthur just nods again dumbly, anxiety suddenly gnawing at his insides at the fact that though Eames has mentioned his time living in Paris and knowing Mal as a young man, he’s never gone into detail. There’s a part of Eames that’s still a mystery to him, and it eats at him. He promises himself to ask about it.

“Anyway,” Ariadne’s voice cuts right through his thoughts. She nudges him, smiling. “Have a fucking awesome time. Get shitfaced again at least once and make sure Eames sends me a snapchat of it.”

“I’m pretty sure he’d do that even without you asking.” Arthur hugs her, smiling a bit, thinking about just how much she really does remind him of his little sister. He isn’t sure if Beth and Ariadne would clash if they met from being too alike, or become evil twin best friends. He isn’t sure he wants to find out.

Cobb walks over and slaps him on the shoulder, seemingly oblivious to his wife embracing Eames for well over three minutes.

“Just don’t die, okay?”

Arthur stares blankly at him.

“I’ll try not to.”

“Good.” Cobb squeezes his shoulder and releases him, walking back into the main room.

Eames finally manages to pry Mal off of him, giving her a kiss on each cheek and sending her off after Cobb. She places her hands flat on Arthur’s chest as she passes, kissing his cheek softly.

“Take good care of my Cedric,  _ mon trésor _ . Make sure he’s well fed and happy.”

Arthur eyes her suspiciously but manages a small smile and nods.

“Of course. Take care of yourself, Mal.”

She smiles and floats off after her husband. Eames hugs a few of his friends from the kitchen staff and finally comes over to Arthur. He pats Ariadne’s head. “Best behavior then, sous chef. No funny business.”

“Yes, chef.” She rolls her eyes and pulls him into a massive bear hug. He laughs and presses a kiss to her hair before releasing her, looking up at Arthur. “Shall we, darling?”

Once in Arthur’s car, Eames turns on the radio and Arthur starts the engine, clearing his throat.

“Everything okay with Mal?” he asks, glancing over at Eames. Eames shrugs.

“She’s as ‘okay’ as she can be. The truth of it is, she’s an adult with an adult husband and I’m not her caretaker. She’ll manage.”

“Calling Cobb an adult may be a stretch.” Arthur scoots them forward, off of the gravelly parking lot and onto the paved road. Eames laughs.

“Touché.”

Waiting back at his apartment are both his and Eames’s packed suitcases. There’s a take-away dinner in the fridge that just needs a quick zap in the microwave, and then they both need to turn in for an early night so they can catch their train at seven the next morning. Arthur knows Eames will gripe about the early hour, but he’ll survive. They have life to live; an adventure to experience; this new ‘in love’ thing to explore together.

Barcelona bursts at the seams with color, towering over vast parks and the shimmering ocean with the bizarre Gaudí architecture the city is so known for. After taking a decently long nap at their hotel’s seaside pool (Arthur slathering himself in the highest SPF sunscreen he could legally find and wearing a shirt regardless), Eames sweeps him away to the Park Güell where they find massive staircases with swiveled banisters made from marble that create optical illusions. Eames pulls him into one of many large caves with stone pillars jutting out of the ground at a slant, presses him against the curved cobble wall, and kisses him tenderly, carefree of who sees them. Arthur lets himself be kissed until Eames takes his hand and pulls him off to see something else beautiful and unusual. For dinner they acquire some Spanish meats and cheeses from a tiny market and sit on the steps of the Sagrada Familia, looking out over the sprawling view of the city. Arthur thinks it must be the most hideous building he’s ever seen, but there’s a beauty to its peculiarity. He tells Eames as much, and Eames tells him that he should have the same attitude toward his choice in shirts.

 

They’re a bit more awake for Venice after a short plane ride and a trip on a ferry. The waters are the bluest thing Arthur’s ever laid eyes on. It’s crowded and full of tourists, but Arthur imagines the narrow winding streets and putrid-smelling canals would be less charming if it wasn’t. Eames’ grip on his hand is tight as they weave through people and past makeshift signs that deliberately misleads people, painting the city as more of a maze than anything that makes any logical sense. They eventually make their way from the Piazza San Marco, which they’re told by a passing official is going to flood soon, to the Rialto Bridge. Eames buys Arthur a black and maroon carnival mask with gold and bronze detailing. They find a tiny hole-in-the-wall pasta joint and order spaghetti carbonara and drink surprisingly delicious cheap wine. Around dusk, after eating melty gelato and licking it from their fingers, they make their way back to the piazza, which is now completely under about two feet of water. It’s been entirely abandoned. Somewhere in the distance, saxophonist croons out an old song Arthur knows he’s heard before. Eames gets a devious smile on his face and steps down into the water, holding out his hand for Arthur. Arthur frowns tightly, looking down at the water, but when he catches Eames’s eye again something inside of him combusts and he finds himself stepping down into the water too. The Adriatic water is warmer than he expects. Eames leads him out to the middle of the piazza, the yellow lights from the surrounding buildings dotting the water like stars. Eames turns and pulls Arthur into him, placing a hand on his lower back and taking Arthur’s with his other, slowly swaying with him to the music. Arthur hears several cameras going off in the distance and hopes those people enjoy their hipstery Instagram pics.

 

Zagreb feels the most ancient out of all the places they’ve gone so far. At a glance it feels almost untouched from some time long past, with its sturdy stone walls and orange tiled roofs. It’s a no-bullshit kind of city, though. Arthur imagines that this mood might be left over from many years of influence of the Soviet machine from behind the Iron Curtain; a certain way of life that didn’t involve much messing around. People walk down the street with purpose, whether they be businessmen or schoolgirls. Arthur buys Eames a silk scarf which Eames proudly wears even though it doesn’t match his outfit at all, and Arthur can’t find it in himself to care. They hold hands and walk through lush parks and cobble streets, listening to all kinds of music, which seem to almost seep up from the street grates. They come across a building that’s a shocking daffodil-yellow color and watch street performers and eat prosciutto, pepper, and goat cheese sandwiches. Eames leans over to press kisses behind Arthur’s ear and at the corner of his lips. By the end of the day Arthur’s cheeks are sore from smiling.

 

Budapest overflows with an eastern-influenced beauty with its massive domes and spiky spires. They arrive as the sun sets and Arthur can’t take his eyes off the way the city lights bounce and dance off of the Danube. They get in a small argument over their plans for the evening, which ends with Eames taking Arthur’s face in his hands and telling him that he respects his opinion, of course, and they can do whatever he wants to. Arthur isn’t used to winning arguments this easily. He looks up a place on his phone called the Szechenyi Baths, a thermally heated swimming pool in the middle of a gorgeous courtyard. When they get there it’s horribly crowded despite being February and a weekday, so instead they walk around until they find some tiny karaoke bar serving happy-hour specials on pálinka cocktails. Arthur gets drunk and sings Simon and Garfunkel’s “Keep the Customer Satisfied” and Eames does snapchat it to Ariadne.

 

Vienna’s every bit as romantic as Arthur imagined it to be. The bro ad streets are lined with impeccably clean white baroque buildings, seemingly impervious to the hordes of tourists, car pollution and rain they experience daily. Arthur imagines the likes of Mozart or Beethoven racing around in carriages, sheet music clutched in their hands as they tried to impress royalty. They debate whether or not they want to go experience a concert or symphony of some sort, but quickly find that paying to hear music in Vienna is nearly pointless when it can be found littering the streets at every turn: string quartets, pianists playing on old broken-down uprights, lone trombone players blowing out emotional tunes, even little kids playing pennywhistles that sound more beautiful than anything Arthur’s ever paid to listen to. They wander the streets curled into each other until it’s too cold and they’re too tired to do anything but head back to their hotel.

 

Innsbruck is more colorful and narrow than Vienna, its streets almost claustrophobic, crammed with vibrant little shops and houses. They take a bus up into the mountains into a little town called Seefeld, where they booked their hotel. They find a tiny restaurant that serves nothing but foot-long bratwursts with mustard and buy a couple of them, wandering around until they stumble across a tiny pub where a crowd of people are gathered around watching some European football match. Eames makes them stop and buys them a couple of beers. Arthur sips one with trepidation and finds that he doesn’t hate it. In fact, he kind of likes it. He feels like he’s lied to himself all these years, thinking he hated beer when in reality he probably just had a bad beer and shunned the rest. He likes the effervescence and the warm feeling he gets in his chest after drinking it. Eames bonds with the locals in the pub over the football and Arthur keeps his hand on his knee possessively.

 

From there, they’d planned to jump on a plane up to Berlin and then go over to Amsterdam the next day, their last day, but upon agreeing that they’re both growing weary of travel, Eames decides to take Arthur to ‘one of his favorite places on this green earth’. So Arthur lets Eames rent a car and take him on a six hour drive through beautiful countryside. The driving is better than flying or sitting on a train because they have the ability to stop, stretch their legs, and switch off whenever they want to. They pass through Lichtenstein (all eight miles across) and enter Switzerland, zipping through Zurich and Bern. Neither hold much interest to Arthur, both seemingly just typical grey European cities that are more business than beauty. Eventually the world around them turns into rolling green hills dotted with snow and jagged snowy peaks. Eventually they reach a small city called Montreux nestled against the vast expanse of Lake Geneva. Eames stops and they get ham and cheese crepes from an outdoor market near a random statue of Freddie Mercury that Eames insists taking a million photos with before they set off walking along the lake. They find a small castle sitting, impossibly, on a small rock out  _ on _ the lake and explore it, finding Lord Byron’s name carved onto one of its ancient stone walls.

It isn’t until they get back to the car that Arthur realizes that this was a pit-stop and isn’t, in fact, where Eames wanted to take him to. So they drive south toward the slopes of the Swiss Alps, entering a wide green valley that follows the Rhône River. Arthur stares out the window in a sort of trance, trying to take in all the Roman ruins and old remnants of castles that litter the landscape of the valley. Eventually they turn a wide corner and Arthur’s jaw drops.

Every one of the foothills at the base of the mountain peaks are covered in grapevines. Vineyards that stretch over the hills and, in some cases,  _ vertically _ up the side of the mountain. Arthur imagines the dedication of having to  _ rappel _ to pick grapes. They’re barren and covered in snow, but he’d know the look of a vineyard no matter what the time of year. He looks at Eames just in time to catch him grinning adoringly at him before looking back at the road.

Soon they pull up to a charming hotel in a small town at the base of a mountain called Chermignon with window boxes that Arthur is sure will be filled with flowers in the spring and summer. The air’s crisp and cool but the sun’s out and Arthur can’t take his eyes off of the gravity-defying vineyards. Can’t stop imagining what they look like in summer, lush and green and draped across the mountainsides like waterfalls of beautiful fruit-bearing vegetation. He wonders how quickly he can get his hands on some of the wine produced here.

Eames walks up behind him onto the balcony of their hotel room and wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist, drawing him back into him.

“What do you think?” he purrs and Arthur leans back, smiling.

“I think it’s incredible, and I’d like to see it in the summertime.”

“I’ll take you back here in the summer. It’s gorgeous.” He pauses, glancing out toward the snow-covered mountains and sighing. “I came here a while back with Mal and Robert for a little holiday.”

Arthur turns to him, eyes scanning the way Eames’s face has turned into all harsh lines, and thinks that maybe Eames is ready to tell him something; unravel another piece of the mystery.

But then his phone rings, and whatever intentions were hanging suspended come crashing down. Arthur looks down at his phone and sees a picture of his sister on the screen. He smiles.

“It’s my sister. Hang on.” He swipes the screen to answer and holds it to his ear. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Arthur.” Her voice comes out in a shaky gasp, and he feels his face go slack.

“Beth, what’s wrong?” He turns from Eames, his other hand instinctively going up to press against his other ear.

“It’s Dad,” she chokes. “He fell. He was out riding a horse in the fields and he got bucked off. He landed on his head. It’s bad. He was in critical condition for a while but they managed to get him into a medically-induced coma. On life support.”

And just like that, Arthur’s world falls out from underneath him. His mouth falls agape as his mind searches for something, anything to say to that.

Suddenly Eames is behind him, a hand on his shoulder, something tethering him to place. Something  _ solid _ . He blinks rapidly.

Beth continues, fighting through obvious tears.

“We need you here, Arthur. Mom needs you here. We don’t know… we don’t  _ know _ …”

And then he’s moving.

He says something to Beth and then something to Eames – what, he can’t remember – and allows himself to be guided back down to where their rental car is, already on his phone booking the soonest ticket out to California.

And Eames doesn’t speak but he’s  _ present _ and Arthur can feel that. It keeps him present as well, grounded in the same reality that surrounds them as they drive to the Geneva airport. Once his ticket’s booked and an exorbitant amount of money is paid, Arthur watches out the window as they trace the edge of the dim waters of the lake, trying to remember the last time he spoke to his dad.

It was just before he left for France. An email, not even a phone call. His father had sent him an email wishing him good luck in his new job, and Arthur had sent him back a one liner:  _ 'Thanks, it’s a really prestigious opportunity and I’m really honored to have been offered it’ _ which translated directly to  _ 'Fuck you for not believing in me before, not supporting me. Look at how well I’m doing with fending for myself’.  _ Guilt forms in the pit of his stomach like he’s swallowed liquid lead, and all he wants to do is jump out of the car and run.

Eames keeps a hand on his knee. Arthur looks down at it and remembers to breathe. It isn’t until they’re stuck in a bit of traffic that Eames turns to him, his face soft and sincere.

“Arthur,” he asks gently. “Do you want me to…?”

Arthur knows the end of the sentence is meant to be  _ 'come with you? _ ’And he knows his answer is unequivocally  _ yes _ , but he also knows that he’s been with Eames for all of three and a half months and Eames hasn’t even met his family and he  _ knows _ that this is something he has to face alone.

He doesn’t  _ know,  _ but he’s pretty sure that Eames is just asking out of courtesy.

He looks down at his knees and shakes his head.

“I’ll be okay. Cobb’ll be pissed if at least one of us doesn’t turn up to work when we said we would, especially so close to our evaluation.”

Eames glances back at him, his mouth slightly agape and his brow furrowed, and Arthur knows he wants to say that  _ none of that matters in comparison _ and  _ I want to be there for you _ but his mouth snaps shut in understanding, reading the unsaid things from Arthur’s expression. Instead, he nods and squeezes his leg and keeps driving.

When they reach the departures entrance at the airport, Eames gets out of the car and helps Arthur get his luggage onto the curb before pulling him into a hug. Arthur’s heart drops, just suddenly remembering everything that’s been ruined because of this.

“I’m so sorry,” Arthur mutters, suddenly frantic. “I’m  _ so sorry _ , I’ll make it up to you, I-”

“Arthur,” Eames breathes, placing a hand on each shoulder and looking him square in the eye. “You have nothing to apologize for. We have to focus on priorities. Call me when you land and let me know you’re okay, hm?”

“Of course.” Arthur nods, though he can’t promise he’ll remember to do anything once he’s on Californian soil with his dad dying just miles away.

“Now, are you  _ sure _ …”

“Yes,” Arthur says quickly. “I appreciate you offering, Eames. I do. I just… you aren’t obligated to follow me halfway around the world because of an emergency.”

“Don’t tell me you’re sending me back to Bordeaux purely because of pretense.” Eames looks earnest, and Arthur can’t help but let out a slow sigh and hang his head.

“It’s not. I’ll be okay. Hey, we’ll Skype and I’ll help you pair the nightly special while I’m away, alright?”

Eames nods, his lips pursed. He hesitates before releasing Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur turns and snatches up his suitcase, walking into the sliding doors without looking back.

It takes him until he gets to the security line to regret his decision not to bring Eames.

By the time he’s on the plane, the emptiness sets in. And then the cold, hard dread.

 

 

 

The first two-hour flight to Frankfurt he spends staring out the window and clutching the seat so hard he thinks his knuckles might bruise. He manages to sedate himself for the ten-odd hour flight to San Francisco by popping three Tylenol PM pills and drinking a gin and tonic. By the time he lands at SFO, he feels like a zombie. He’s picked up by Santiago, one of the young guys who works for his dad, for the hour and a half drive up to Sacramento (which Santiago says he can make in less than an hour if he stays left) and only remembers to text Eames as they pass through Oakland. It’s afternoon in California which means it’s around two AM in Bordeaux, the timezone he’s acclimatized to; every time he looks out the window he’s startled to see sunlight. Santiago’s car smells like dust and old books (which he collects) and a Christmas air freshener he’d obviously forgotten to change. The queasiness Arthur feels because of the stale scent is the only reason he realizes he hasn’t actually eaten in nearly seventeen hours, but the thought of passing food through his lips makes him want to staple his mouth shut.

The sterile whiteness of the hospital doesn’t do much more to ease his jetlag or the sick bile feeling in his stomach, and instead elevates him to a state of being somewhere akin to feeling caught between a dream and reality.  _ A nightmare you’re lucid during _ , he thinks, before Santiago drags him around a corner to reveal a small waiting room where his mother and sister are sitting crumpled over in uncomfortable chairs.

Beth sees him first. She looks like he’s never seen her before, not even after their childhood dog got hit by a tractor, or when her first serious boyfriend cheated on her in high school. She’s an ill shade of pale and there are dark bags under her eyes he’s almost positive aren’t a result of smudged makeup. She launches out of her seat and reaches him in three steps, pulling him into a tight hug. He wraps his arms around her and looks past her at his mom, who’s only just now looked up. She doesn’t look all that much better than Beth. 

But she wears it better. He  _ knows _ how much she’s hurting, but he knows his mom, and he knows she’s holding herself together for her daughter, and now her son as well. She’ll be unflinchingly strong through this whole thing. Half of him likes how his mother is always the stable rock in the middle of a stormy sea, unmovable no matter how violent the waves get, shielding him and his sister from the brunt of it. But the other part of him wants all bullshit pretenses to be dropped. He wants his mother to  _ feel _ so he can feel.

He’s knocked out of his train of thought when Beth starts shaking in sobs against his shoulder. Her fiancé, Chen, flinches as if to get up out of his chair, but Arthur just gives him a reassuring ‘ _ I’ve got this _ ’ glance and rubs her back.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Breathe.”

“Arthur.” His mother pushes herself up from her chair unsteadily, walking over and taking his hand. “It’s good to see you, pumpkin. Thank you for flying out on such short notice…”

“How is he?” Arthur asks quietly, muffled slightly by Beth’s hair.

His mom looks down, just a split second of pain, and then her spine is straightened. 

“He’s the same,” she says gently, reaching over to push a stray lock of hair away from Arthur’s forehead as Beth pulls back, staggering to wrap an arm around their mother. “They’ve got him stable, but they aren’t sure… well, they aren’t sure he’ll ever wake up again, baby. He could get better. We’re still in the early hours and you never know, y’know, sometimes things happen, sometimes  _ miracles _ happen.”

Arthur clenches his jaw and jerks away from her. Things fall silent then as everyone makes their way back over to the uncomfortable chairs and settles in for the long wait.

 

 

 

Arthur spends the night at the hospital and wakes to a stiff neck and a greasy croissant sandwich shoved in his face. Beth’s the reason for the latter, kneeling in front of him with a stern look in her eyes.

“Eat,” she demands. “You look like you might vaporize at any moment.  _ Eat _ .”

Arthur’s stomach makes a hideously loud groan and he snatches the sandwich, shoving half of it into his mouth at once.  Beth stays kneeling in front of him. Arthur eyes her a bit suspiciously.

“You okay?” he asks after managing to swallow his first mouthful with the aid of the coffee he discovered sitting on the end table beside him.  

She shrugs one shoulder before shifting to sit in the chair next to him, pulling her hair up into a bun on top of her head. “Chen left for work about an hour ago. Mom’s in with the doctors. I just… feel… I don’t feel much right now.”

Arthur nods, licking the crumbs off of his fingers because he doesn’t have the willpower to care about appearances.

“How are you doing?” she asks, reaching over to place her hand on his elbow. “Why didn’t you bring Eames?”

Arthur glances over at her, his lips tightening.

“We’ve been dating for three months,” he says dully. “He asked, but I told him to go home. He’s needed there…”

Beth gives him a tight-jawed look before sighing.

“The way you talk about him… I don’t know. I just thought it would be nice to have him here for you.”

“I’ll be okay,” Arthur says, because if he’s said it out loud, it has to be.

That evening, when he’s holed up in his childhood bedroom in Sonoma after the doctors insisted they go and get some proper rest, he opens his laptop and skypes Eames.

When Eames answers, it’s on his phone, the camera shaky as he tries to stuff his headphones in the jack. Arthur notes that he’s still in his cottage, despite the fact that it’s the afternoon there and he should be getting to work.

“Hey love,” Eames finally says as he settles down onto his bed, steadying the camera on his face. “What’s the story?”

“Well.” Arthur runs a hand over his face, realizing how much of a mess he must look when his five o’clock shadow scrapes his palm. “Nothing’s changed. He’s stable but he’s unconscious and well… the doctor explained it that there are levels of consciousness in coma patients. She basically said that if a ten was awake and a zero was a vegetable… my dad’s at a two.”

Eames gives Arthur a heartfelt look and bites at his lip.

“Oh darling… I’m—“

“What’s the special tonight?” Arthur asks quickly, changing the subject in rapid-fire as he feels the panic start to well up in his chest. “Explain it in detail.”

“Oh, um.” Eames rubs at his temples, frowning. “Well, I was going to do a seared ahi tuna with a cilantro sesame pesto over a bed of polenta. Just simple, love.”

“Tell Dom to get out the 2004 Austrian Grüner. It has a green label. It’s really dry, should be good…”

“I’ll certainly pass that on, love, but listen. This isn’t the reason I’ve been needing to talk to you. Tell me how you’re holding up.”

Arthur clears his throat.

“I’m fine. Please, don’t worry. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Even over skype with the shitty quality of Eames’s phone camera, Arthur can tell that he’s worried. The lines on his face become more exaggerated and he has a look in his eyes that makes Arthur just want to crawl into his arms and pretend the rest of the world is some radical farce that doesn’t actually exist.

“Call me at any time,” Eames insists. “Be it three in the morning here, please, if you need me, don’t hesitate. Promise me.”

“Sure. Talk to you soon.” Arthur ends the call before Eames has time to say anything else, falling back into the stiff springs of his old mattress and staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars his dad put all over his ceiling when he was five. He finds no comfort in it, only a constant reminder that his father’s lying in the state between life and death with no probable escape and he’ll never get to say goodbye. He’ll never get to say sorry.

 

 

 

Arthur doesn’t sleep. He lays in bed and feels the guilt and pain surge up in his chest, sting at his eyes, before he’s able to cram it back down to the pit of his stomach.

The next day goes by even more slowly than the first. Arthur spends most of it by his father’s side (shaved head, pale, wax-like, tubes sticking out of everywhere, doesn’t even  _ look _ like his father) listening to the symphony of electronic beeps and compressed air whirring in various expensive machines all around the room.

Beth lingers in the corner, skittish, unwilling to get too close to the empty vessel that was once their dad. Arthur catches her looking at him sometimes like he’s some sort of alien, not at all family. And Arthur continues to feel the guilt in waves, crashing around in his chest and strangling him from the inside out. He feels her eyes on him too, worrying, sensing what he’s going through despite his calm, practiced silence.

When the doctors kick them out mid-afternoon so they can run some tests, his mom drives them back home. He looks out across their vineyard, across all of the currently-dead vines just about ready to burst back into life, and imagines his dad this time of year doing everything he can to get the crops in order for the growing season to start. He’d be out there right now, picking weeds and fertilizing and fussing over whether or not all of the stakes are stuck in the ground properly or if the soil’s full of enough nutrients for the vines to prosper enough that year.

He barely makes it out of the car and to his room before it all spills over in a tidal wave, emotions he’d been shoving down and  _ down _ suddenly bursting and punching and kicking their way out of his chest in the form of hyperventilation. He slides down onto the floor next to his bed, burying his face in his knees and focusing on trying to go back to blocking everything out.

Eventually, from behind him, his laptop flickers on from sleep and the annoying skype ringtone fills the room.

He considers not answering, considers waiting until he can put his calm mask back on and continue to lie to Eames, but then he’d be  _ lying to Eames _ and maybe he’s sick of it, maybe he’s sick of having to hide emotions from his significant other. He’d tried to express his ‘daddy issues’ with his ex and his ex had acted about as uncomfortable as if Arthur had made him sit on an anthill. And  _ Eames isn’t his ex _ , Eames  _ cares about him _ . It’s different.

When he answers he’s still gasping for breath, his back pressed up to the side of his bed with the lights still turned off.

“I’m sorry,” he grits out the second he sees Eames’s face go from a cheery greeting to horrified and worried. “I’m so sorry, I never wanted you to see me like this, but I can’t come to my family with this… I can’t  _ add _ to what they’re dealing with, and I have no one else… no one else who cares…”

“Arthur, sweetheart,” Eames’s voice is soft but firm. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Arthur rubs ruefully at his cheek. “Nothing, and that’s the problem. He’s never waking up. He’s never coming back. And I’m never going to be able to tell him how sorry I am for being such a horrible son all these years.”

“You aren’t a horrible son.” Eames says. “You’ve had your issues with one another. I don’t think he’d want you to feel guilty for it…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur gasps. “It’ll never get resolved now.”

Eames pauses, his brow furrowed and his forehead creased.

“These pretenses are just… unnecessary,” he says finally. “I’m buying a ticket to California right now.”

“Eames…” Arthur shakes his head, backtracking, hoping Eames doesn’t think that this phone call is him sending mixed signals. Him  _ asking for something _ … taking  _ advantage of Eames _ .

“Please, darling, listen.” Eames holds up a hand, resolute. “I know your first line-of-defense argument is that it’s only been three months that we’ve been together. But that isn’t exactly true, is it? Superficially, yes, but I’ve felt very, very deeply for you for much longer. And regardless of the timeline, what I feel for you… well, it’s hard to explain.  _ Impossible _ to explain, really. But I want to be there for you, if you think me being there will offer any sort of comfort to you through this. Because you’re very important to me. And it’s killing me to be an ocean away from you when this is happening.”

Arthur opens his mouth but has no idea what to say or think or do. Eames continues before he can speak.

“And what’s your second argument, then? That I’m needed at Limbo? Limbo will survive without me. I’ve trained my team to function independent from me. They’ll be fine without me breathing down their necks or bossing them around. Ariadne’s a completely competent chef, and she’ll be a head chef before she knows it. Probably better than me. But it’s like I said to you before you left… in life, we have to focus on priorities. What’s important. And sweetheart,  _ you’re _ what’s important to me. So if you’ll have me, I want to be there for you. I  _ want to _ . Just say the word.”

Arthur thinks to argue, but thinks to try and find another reason, another deflection, but all of that crumbles when he looks to his side to try and look into Eames’s eyes. Eames, who  _ isn’t there _ . He finds nothing but empty space, so he looks back to the laptop screen.

“Okay,” he says softly. “Okay. Yes.”

Eames’s expression melts a bit and he nods, staying on the call with Arthur while he books his ticket and calls Cobb to explain. Arthur can tell that Cobb isn’t happy regardless of how cool and collected Eames is while speaking to him.

The next morning, Arthur takes his dad’s pickup (which feels wrong) and drives over to Sacramento to pick Eames up (which… doesn’t feel wrong at all). He waits for Eames near baggage claim and when he sees him, it takes every part of him not to  _ run _ into his arms like some Hallmark movie. He does power-walk, for all it’s worth, and lets himself fall into Eames’ arms without any reservations.

Eames holds him tightly and Arthur lets out a shuddering breath, pulling back so he can look at him. He opens his mouth to speak and Eames, lightning quick, puts a finger up to his lips.

“If what you’re going to say is any sort of apology for me being here, please, don’t.”

Eames cups his face and Arthur looks helplessly into his grey eyes.

“I was going to say ‘thank you’.” Arthur whispers, and Eames cracks a small smile and plants a gentle kiss to Arthur’s lips.

Eames buys a triple-shot espresso at the airport Starbucks before they both climb back into the pickup truck and make their way over to the hospital. Luckily, his family’s out in the waiting room when they get there. Beth straightens up when she sees them approaching and smiles, standing up to immediately give Eames a hug.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she says, pulling back to take him in with warm eyes. Eames conjures up a more subdued version of his normal blindingly charming smile.

“You must be the famous Bethany I’ve heard so much about.”

“Who’re you calling famous?” she chuckles. Arthur’s mom walks up behind them, reaching over to place a hand on Eames’ shoulder.

“It truly does mean a lot to us that you came, Cedric.”

“Please,” Eames leans in and pecks her cheek, “call me Eames. It’s lovely to meet you, Jacqueline. Both of you.”

“I’m sorry it had to be like this,” Arthur’s mom says wearily, like she’s finally letting a bit of her guard down and her emotion show. Eames has that effect on people.

“Me, too.” Eames looks earnest and Arthur just wants to crawl back into his arms, but he restrains himself. Instead, Eames seems to sense it, and pulls Arthur into his side. Arthur lets him.

His mom looks between them and sighs.

“Nothing’s changing here today. They’re just running more tests… we aren’t making a decision yet. Arthur, why don’t you both go home and get some rest? I’m sure Eames is exhausted. I’m sure you’re  _ both _ exhausted.”

Eames looks to Arthur, ready to follow him in whatever decision he makes, but Arthur can tell that his mother isn’t lying, that Eames  _ is _ exhausted and anyone with eyes can see how that’s true. So he nods, sliding his hand down Eames’s arm until their fingers are twined.

“C’mon. We’ll get lunch and then we’ll go nap, okay?”

Eames flashes both Beth and his mother another sad smile before nodding and letting Arthur lead him back out to the parking lot. When he turns on the ignition in the car, some old Joni Mitchell song blares from the radio and Eames leans back. For a second, things almost seem normal.

“Your mum and sister are lovely,” Eames comments quietly. Arthur smiles, pulling the truck onto the freeway.

“You’ve really lifted their spirits. They haven’t shut up about meeting you since I told them about us.”

Eames just looks over at him and smiles, reaching over and squeezing Arthur’s knee affectionately. Arthur appreciates how Eames doesn’t look at him with pity. He drives them through In-N-Out because it’s on the way and it’s easy, and when they get back to his parents’ house they sit out on the patio and watch the sun stream down over the rows and rows of brown dead vines. It’s chilly, but after the cold Bordeaux winter they survived together, the balmy 50 degrees feels almost warm against their skin. Eames seems charmed by the view of all the rolling vineyards and the tree-covered hills between them and Napa. Sonoma, he supposes, really is a beautiful place. He’d let his teenage drive to escape it all blind him to it.

When they finish lunch they curl up on Arthur’s old bed, Eames chuckling about how Arthur’s childhood bedroom is covered in posters for old black and white films and art prints instead of “normal” adolescent boy things like band posters and Playboy. Arthur gives him a dry look.

“Do I really look like a Playboy guy to you?”

Eames snakes his arms around Arthur’s waist and pulls him close, pressing his nose into Arthur’s neck and inhaling deeply.

“Mm, no. You have far too much class for dirty wank mags.”

“I’m glad you think so highly of me.”

“Darling,” Eames purrs, although it’s obvious to Arthur that he’s already half-asleep. “I think so highly of you, you’d need a telescope to see what I think.”

“You’re the most ridiculous man I’ve ever met,” Arthur responds, and is met with soft snoring. Watching Eames sleep is a privilege he’s come to crave these past few months. Arthur loves the way his face goes instantly slack and how his lashes brush against the tops of his cheeks. Eames could look attractive no matter what, he thinks, but the sight of Eames sleeping has a special way of making Arthur’s heart ache. But now this is Eames, who just flew five and a half thousand miles to be at his side. Eames, who implied, if not told him pretty directly, that he’s one of the most important things in his world. Eames, who cares about him enough to be here, to see Arthur at his absolute worst, without running away. Eames, who’s  _ Eames _ , the best person Arthur’s ever met, the first person he wants to see every morning and the last person he wants to see at night. His presence has given Arthur some sort of metaphysical balance: a light and a center that wasn’t there before. If Arthur’s mom is the rock sheltering him from the storm, Eames is the lighthouse guiding him home.

And just like that, Eames is a fixture. A permanent installation.

He presses his lips to Eames’s temple and leaves them there, because he can.

“I love you,” he whispers, because he does. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI, the rest of this fic will probably get rolled out a bit more regularly now until the end! I really need to finish it within the next month because nanowrimo is reserved for my actual original novel. Plus, I have the rest planned out for the most part, so it's much easier to write. <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added warnings for: death of an OC, grief, mention of mental illness, and also gratuitous fluffiness in the form of the 'calm before the storm', if you will.
> 
> And thank you thank you thank you to my beta [amy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb) who looked over this chapter for me, who is the best.

Eames is by Arthur’s side as they wait for his dad’s heart monitor to slowly flatten out into a hard line.

Eames doesn’t leave his side again for the next seventy-two hours. When they put his father (or what everyone thinks is his father but is actually an empty casket with a few of his belongings) into the ground, Eames’s hand around his waist is the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. He brings a steady light to three of the worst days of Arthur’s life, and manages to lift his family’s spirits by keeping them engaged in mild, interesting conversation and even _cooking for them_.

Eames waits patiently behind with Chen as Arthur, his mom, and Beth all walk out in the middle of his father’s favorite spot on the vineyard and pour his ashes out into the wind (his mother had told them that he requested, once, to be grapevine fertilizer when he died, which Arthur thinks is a little morbid but makes him ache regardless because it reminds him of the sense of humor that was among the list of things he loved about his dad but pushed aside in favor of his own pride).  

Grief, Arthur notes, feels like something he wants to cheat. Having heard most of his adult life about the “stages” of grief, it almost feels like he’s had a book spoiled for him and he just wants to skip to the end where everything’s okay. Sometimes, his self-awareness makes him almost feel detached entirely from the grief, like he’s watching someone else inside of himself experience the feelings he’s experiencing.

The days after the funeral move in slow motion. Arthur experiences the worst of himself – Arthur doesn’t even want to be _around_ himself – and yet somehow, Eames stays by his side through it all. And in some strange way Arthur can’t even begin to comprehend, Eames always knows exactly what to do or how to act to make things better.

When Arthur curls up into fetal position and doesn’t move for thirteen hours, Eames curls up beside him wordlessly, occasionally bringing him tea or cheese and crackers or water.

When Arthur wakes up at the crack of dawn to go out into the vineyard and yank weeds out of the ground, like maybe doing so will make his dad come back so he can be proud of him, Eames follows and stays beside him, yanking weeds out as well.

When Arthur makes the impulsive decision to drive to the coast in the middle of the night, Eames comes with him and collects stones for Arthur to throw into the sea.

When Arthur bruises all of his knuckles from slamming his fist into the wall (because the cavernous vacuum of a black hole that’s formed in his chest below his breastbone from the realization that his dad will _never_ be proud of him makes him want to _scream_ ), Eames holds ice to his hand and doesn’t scold him, instead holding Arthur and telling him whispered, meaningless stories from his past.

Before they leave for the airport to begin their fifteen-hour journey home, Eames insists on making a big dinner for the whole family and whomever they want to invite. Once word gets out, the house is filled with estranged cousins and relatives, all trying to win over a moment of Eames’s attention. He takes all of it with supreme ease and grace, serving up a massive pot of coq au vin. Arthur rummages through his dad’s own wine cellar and finds something he remembers his dad loving deeply to serve with the food, and by the time everyone leaves they can’t stop complimenting them both on how well everything went together, how delicious everything was, how _proud_ Arthur’s dad would be, how much he’d love Eames, etcetera.

They clean and head upstairs to pack and get ready to head out and catch their red-eye. Arthur’s mom drives them to SFO with Eames in the passenger seat and Arthur, Beth and Chen all shoved into the back.

“Really happy we got to eat something you made,” Chen says as he shakes Eames’s hand enthusiastically at the departures drop-off area, a pleased grin on his face and his lips a bit stained from wine.

“What he _means_ is,” Beth interrupts, “he’s really happy we got to meet you. We all are.” She slides over and gives Eames a tight hug. He smiles and pecks her cheek.

“I know this was a very difficult time for you all, but I’m very glad I got to meet you as well. Thank you for sharing your home and your family with me.” He looks from Beth to Arthur’s mom fondly, taking both of their hands.

Arthur sees his mom tear up a bit, something she’d only done once before when they were scattering his dad’s ashes. She looks back at him, taking a deep breath to gather herself.

“Your father,” she starts, her voice cracking, “was so proud of you. He never got the chance to tell you, Arthur, but he was. He realized before the end that the best thing you could ever do was be yourself and do what makes you happy. I wish he had the chance to tell you this himself. And I wish he’d had the chance to meet you, sweetheart.” She looks back at Eames. “Because he would have been exuberant to see Arthur with someone who loves him so much.”

She squeezes Eames’s hand and pulls him in to kiss his cheek before sweeping Arthur into a tight hug. He returns it, burying his face briefly in her shoulder, breathing in her floral perfume and trying to commit it to memory.

“Love you,” he whispers.

“I love you too.” She combs her fingers through his hair a bit before releasing him, allowing Beth to tackle him in a tight hug.

“You’d better text me every day,” she mutters. “Wedding’s still in June. And since my daddy can’t be there, I want my big brother to walk me down the aisle.”

Arthur feels a bittersweet pang inside of him that stings at his eyes. When Beth pulls back to look at him she’s wearing a tight-lipped smile that makes her remember her as a little girl with pigtails and missing front teeth.

“I’ll be there,” he tells her.

She grins and nods toward Eames. “And you’d better have a hot date too.”

Arthur glances over at Eames who just grins back at him. He feels his dimples forming.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

 

 

 

 

When they finally make it back to Bordeaux, Eames drives them home to Arthur’s apartment from the airport through a torrential rainstorm. He makes a comment about how it’s a bit early for Bordeaux’s spring showers, and that’s the only reason Arthur bothers to look at his phone and absorb the date: March fourth.

Six days. Six days until the Michelin people come. He’d managed to avoid thinking about it entirely over the last week and a half in California. Eames took all of Cobb’s phone calls and kept Arthur away from the inevitable panic and guilt, which he appreciates immensely, but diving back into reality is a cold shock to his system.

Eames, being _Eames_ , seems to sense the panic welling up inside of him like a bloodhound. He pushes Arthur up against the wall in the elevator and kisses him slowly, and when they make it into the apartment he chucks their bags in the bedroom and goes to the kitchen, making them grilled cheese sandwiches (or ‘cheese toasties’, as Eames calls them, which Arthur doesn’t get at all because you don’t toast the bread, you _grill_ it… but then Eames calls the broiler the ‘grill’ so who the fuck knows) and chocolate soufflés. Eames makes love to him in the kitchen while the soufflés cook and then they sprawl out on the kitchen floor and eat them.

It works. Eames keeps Arthur’s mind off of everything – his dad, the restaurant, the guilt – for the rest of the night.

He isn’t able to avoid it all forever, though. Not when they show up to work the next day and find Cobb gathering everyone into the kitchen for a big staff meeting. He rushes over to them when they walk in, red-faced and eyes bulging.

“Thank _god_ you two are back. Arthur, so sorry to hear about--”

“Thanks,” Arthur says quickly, glancing around. “So what’s going on…?”

“Well, I’m sure you remember that the Michelin people are coming on the tenth, which is in _five days_ , so we’re having a talk about our game plan. Especially now that everyone’s back.”

They find a couple of open foldable chairs and place themselves in them. One of the wait staff goes to sit next to him, Ariadne’s behind them in a flash, stealing the seat and scooting it up close to Arthur’s.

“Oh Arthur,” she says, her face exaggeratedly mouse-like with remorse as she scoops up his hand and holds it in both of hers. “I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. God, what a horrible fucking thing to happen… how are you holding up?”

“I’m okay,” he says, clearing his throat and reaching up to loosen his tie a bit. “It’s been tough, but I’m okay.”

“How have things been here?” Eames mutters, leaning in close. Ariadne smiles.

“Things were fine. Had to clean a few clocks in the meantime but everything stayed afloat, right?

“Well done,” Eames reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. Ariadne gives him a playful shove to the arm and laughs. The bell-bright sound of it is cut short, however, as she looks up to see Yusuf approaching them with a scowl on his face.

“Yusuf!” Eames chirps, standing and giving him a half-handshake-half-hug. “What brings you here so early?”

“Dominic _forced_ me to get here this early. I had to call in some favors so that my deliveries were all still met today. Apparently my very important job of _handing you seafood and leaving_ is enough to reserve me a seat at this bloody fucking talking to. Oh hey, Ariadne.” Yusuf blinks as if all the frustration he was just expressing suddenly evaporates. Ariadne smiles up at him and offers a little wave.

“Hey Yusuf. Good to see you.”

Arthur looks between them and then gets up, moving to the seat on the other side of Eames.

“Take my seat,” Arthur offers, trailing off because Yusuf is already sitting down in the vacated chair. Eames glances at Arthur as he sits back down, wiggling his brow and Arthur bites back a snort.

“Okay, everyone here? Good, let’s get started.” Cobb closes the door to the kitchen and walks to the center of the circle of chairs, clasping his hands together. “As everyone’s aware, we’ve got our two MVPs back just in time to really buckle down for the next few days. Arthur, Eames, welcome back. Now, can anyone tell me what _perseverance_ means…?”

Arthur looks down at his feet, zoning out. Cobb had given him one of these pep talks on his first day and it did nothing but make him never want to hear the word ‘teamwork’ again for as long as he lives. Cobb’s good at inspiring the crew, and it shows by the mixture of intrigue and inspiration written on everyone’s faces – especially the younger members of the wait staff who might dream of one day owning their own restaurant or business.

After he vaguely hears Cobb suggest that everyone go around the circle and say what they could do better the night of the evaluation the kitchen doors burst open and Mal walks in, an easy smile gracing her elegant lips. She’s wearing a lacy lavender knee-length dress with a pair of simple black heels that _clip clip clip_ across the linoleum. Arthur feels Eames shift next to him and looks over to find him tight-lipped.

“So sorry I’m late,” she says, her musical French accent breaking up the tension caused by the interruption of the door. “Traffic was horrible this morning. Please, carry on.” She blows a kiss toward Cobb and takes an open seat across from them, flashing a small smile at Eames. Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur sees the corner of Eames’s lips twitch, not quite enough to form a smile so much as an acknowledgement.

For the rest of the meeting, every time Arthur glances over to check, Eames doesn’t take his eyes off of Mal. His eyes are a bit glazed over with some emotion Arthur can’t read… but it isn’t good. He knows that much.

Cobb, at the end of the meeting, launches into an inspirational speech that makes Arthur want to gouge his own eardrums out.

“Some of you may think that earning the prestige of _three stars_ may be impossible. And I’m here to tell you that it’s not. That third star is well within our grasp.”

Arthur could cry in relief when it ends.

When everyone finally gets up to leave, Mal makes her way – _clip, clip, clip_ – in a beeline toward them.

“Arthur, mon chou, I am so sorry to hear about your father.” She rests a hand on his shoulder. “He must have been a great man to raise such a marvelous son.”

“Thank you, Mal,” Arthur offers her a small smile which she returns before looking toward Eames.

“Cedric, you’re looking peaky. Jet-lag?”

“Yes,” Eames supplies quickly, buttoning up his chef’s jacket and looking askance. “It was a long journey.” His eyes lock on her suddenly, narrowing. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Hm? Of course.”

“That dress…” Eames motions toward her and trails off.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” She leans up and drags a kiss across Eames’s cheek before turning and heading back out into the front of the restaurant. Eames stairs after her, blank. Arthur doesn’t know what to say, at least not in this public a setting, so he clears his throat.

“It’s Thursday,” he says softly. “We don’t have to do anything fancy but we could order some pizza…”

Eames looks down at him like he’s just realized he was speaking and blinks.

“Oh! Of course, love. Pizza at my place tonight, yeah? I’ll see you after the shift, I’ve got to go talk some things over with Yusuf.” He presses a kiss to Arthur’s forehead before briskly walking off after Yusuf who’s strolling leisurely toward the back exit with Ariadne at his side.

As Arthur watches him go, he concedes that _tonight is the night_. He let Eames in on the most horrifically intimate few days of his life, the lease he can do is share whatever secret he’s hiding from him. And Arthur’s not one to try and force secrets out of anyone – but this one has been sitting in his mind like stagnant, festering water for months, ever since Mal charged into their Thursday all those months ago.

The rest of the day inches by, the unrepentant rain pounding down against all of the windows and the roof, making the dinner rush a bit less than normal. Eames makes a shrimp scampi so basic that it could only come from a distracted mind, yet still has small touches of genius in it like saffron and thyme and grated fennel. Arthur dredges up a floral Riesling and splits his time between pouring and doing a quick inventory of the cellar, something he’d been meaning to do for a few weeks before everything happened. He gets lost among the dust and ancient oak wine racks and doesn’t realize that it’s time to go home until Eames comes looking for him.

They’re both exhausted, so Eames calls their favorite pizza delivery place as they drive back to his cottage so they can avoid the long wait. They barely have time to change into pajamas (which for Arthur means some sweats and one of Eames’s old t-shirts regardless of the fact that he now has plenty of clothes he’s left at Eames’s place) before the pizza delivery arrives. Eames pulls a pile of throw blankets out of his linen closet and they both curl up under them on the couch, eating in comfortable silence and watching the rain fall.

Arthur can’t stand it any longer, though.

“Eames,” he says, setting the rest of his slice back down in the box and turning to him.

“Mmm?” Eames responds, staring absent-mindedly out the window.

“What’s your history with Mal?”

When Eames’s face hardens and he doesn’t answer right away, Arthur launches into a rambled reasoning.

“I could tell something was bothering you today when she came in. Something… dark. And there’s been something you’ve been keeping from be ever since that first night when she burst in on us when we were having burgers. And you don’t _have_ to tell me… I trust you enough to know that you would tell me if something was important. I just… want to help. Whatever it is, it’s really affecting you. And no one else. Cobb seems completely oblivious. I know you said she had issues… that she wasn’t well. But there’s more to it, between you two. And I just… I just thought if I could _understand_ what it was… that maybe… maybe I can help you deal with it.”

Eames stares at Arthur’s mouth through his entire speech, his brow furrowed and his eyes… _sad_. Arthur snaps his mouth shut and waits.

“Darling,” Eames breathes, reaching up and cupping his face, smoothing his thumb over Arthur’s bottom lip, wiping away a stray crumb of crust. “I have nothing to hide from you. It’s just hard for me to talk about because… because I feel responsible.”

Arthur frowns and reaches over to place his hand soothingly on Eames’s thigh. Eames looks down and takes a deep breath.

“Could we maybe crack open a bottle of wine, in that case?”

Arthur shifts out from under the blankets and goes and fetches a bottle he’s been stashing in Eames’s pantry, opening it and pouring out two large glasses, bringing them both back as well as the bottle. Eames takes a large gulp when he’s handed his before taking another bite of pizza, chewing thoughtfully. Finally, he clears his throat.

“I met Mal when I was in Paris at culinary school when I was nineteen. My parents set me up in this posh apartment in the 11th and I hated it. It was their compromise… I could throw my life away if they allowed me to live in luxury still, if only to preserve their public image. I’d have been chuffed as a bloody cucumber to have lived in a shoebox apartment in some neighborhood where the water runs brown for thirty seconds, but there I was, thrust back into the kind of lifestyle I’d tried so desperately to escape.

“I had two neighbors on either side of me. One was Robert Fischer, the son of a restaurant mogul who’d decided to go to business school while taking some gastronomy classes so he could understand fully what would be expected of him upon inheriting his father’s empire. The other was Mal. She was actually attending a prestigious sommelier academy, training to become a sommelier.”

That news takes Arthur aback. Mal had never expressed, even vaguely, an interest in the wines that belonged to her and her family. The only time he’d ever even seen her down in the cellar was that bizarre experience on New Year’s Eve.

“We ended up kind of bonding together, the three of us,” Eames continues, “and we became best mates. Inseparable, the three of us. As the years ticked by we started making plans. Silly plans, really. Just dreams of all opening a restaurant together with Robert as our owner and manager, me as the head chef, and Mal as the somm. It was just silly, really. It was all so _silly_ …

“Now, you have to understand that Mal’s parents owned and operated Limbo while this was all happening. It was a new venture, a brand-new restaurant, and it was really trendy and popular and the Michelin people were scheduled to go and dine there the week after mine and Robert’s graduation. Her parents were _desperate_ for those three stars. Her father all but bankrupt them in the process, and then her mother turned heavily to the bottle. It was all kind of a mess and it had a really negative effect on her. She was…she used to be…”

“Lovely,” Arthur supplies.

Eames swallows audibly and nods. “Yes. And one night… well, one night she walked in on Robert and I… together. I think it shattered some sort of idealistic dream she had in her head. Of what, I don’t know. But she got hideously angry at us, threw things at us, told us she never wanted to see us again. I should have sensed something was… off. That something wasn’t right with her, then. But I was young and bullheaded and I thought I was in love. So after graduation, I left with him. His father was opening up a restaurant in Taos, New Mexico with a chef I admired and I was promised a job there learning about wild mushrooms and Latin food, which was completely and utterly foreign to me at the time.

“So we left without saying goodbye, or even checking in on her. Turns out that the night the Michelin people were meant to arrive at Limbo, her mother drank an entire bottle of Grand Marnier and got behind the wheel of her Volkswagen and drove into a tree at 180 kilometers per hour.”

Arthur puts a hand over his mouth, and Eames hangs his head.

“They closed Limbo after that, and I never heard from Mal again. Robert and I didn’t last, of course. When our summer in New Mexico came to an end, he wanted to fly back to Los Angeles and look into opening a restaurant, but I was twenty-three and completely wayward and wanting to explore the world and all the food it had to offer me. So we split, and I didn’t hear from Mal again… until she called me three years ago, saying that she was going to re-open Limbo with her then-fiancé and she really wanted me in on the project. She seemed… strange. She’s seemed strange ever since. I even tried apologizing once for what we – what I – did to her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. It’s like she doesn’t even want to acknowledge that any of that existed. And lately she’s been showing signs that have really frightened me. She’ll come to mine at random times, sobbing hysterically, with absolutely no explanation for why. Usually she tries to write it off as an argument with Dom, but when I ask him about it the next day he has no memory of any of it, and he’s not the sort to lie.”

“The dress.” Arthur looks up at him. “The dress she wore today, you felt weird about it…”

“It was her mother’s,” Eames responds, shuddering. “I met her parents on several occasions. Her father, Miles, was a lovely British bloke who got on with me purely over queen and country and nothing else. He knew of my family and must’ve told his wife because whenever she saw me, she would try and thrust me at Mal. One time we met her for lunch and she was wearing that dress. It isn’t the kind of dress you forget, especially not on a woman that looks like Mal or her mother. And I don’t just think Dom’s oblivious. I think, to her, he’s _dangerous_.”

Arthur sets down his wineglass and scoops Eames’s hands into his own, running his thumbs against the curves of his palms.

“What do you mean? Do you think he’s hurting her?”

“I think that Dom’s planted this idea in her mind that she can’t get rid of… that somehow getting the third Michelin star is the only way she’ll make up for her mother’s death. I’m _positive_ it’s how he convinced her to reopen the restaurant.”

“You think he married her because of her family’s name?”

“I don’t really give a monkey’s arse what Dominic Cobb’s intentions are. He’s a shallow, selfish man. I do think he loves his wife, but I think he’s also in love with what marrying her has given him, and knowingly or unknowingly, I think he takes advantage of that. Just like he takes advantage of her illness… her grief.”

Eames downs the rest of his wine and Arthur takes a deep breath, leaning back into the couch cushions and staring out at the blurry outlines of the solar lights that line the walkway through Eames’s garden, trying to process everything he just heard.

“So do you think she’ll do anything?”

“I don’t know,” Eames replies quickly. “I’m terrified she will. It just keeps getting worse. She used to just seem so… pleasant to everyone else and then be real with me. And now she’s just _pleasant_ with me as well. I think the pressure’s getting to her.”

“So should we do something?” Arthur pulls his knees against his chest. Eames only sighs and shrugs.

“Yes. But what, I don’t know. There’s no talking to her… it’s near impossible to get through to her now. I’ll try talking to Dom. Maybe I can make him see the light.”

“Eames.” Arthur reaches over and grazes the tips of his fingers against the stubble on Eames’s jaw. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened back then, and you can’t blame yourself now.”

Eames snags the rest of the bottle of wine from the table, wrestling the cork out with his teeth and pouring himself another glass. When he secures the cork back into the mouth of the bottle, he lets out a shaky sigh.

“Half of me keeps thinking… I wish I never agreed to come here. I let Mal romance me into this city… this _cottage_ … and I ate it all up. I thought things would be different. But then the other half of me knows that if I hadn’t of come here, I wouldn’t have met you…” He trails off, tracing his index finger up the seam of Arthur’s sweatpants. Arthur snatches the wineglass out of his hands and sets it down on the coffee table, crawling into his lap.

“You don’t need to weigh this,” he says, running his hands across Eames’s shoulders and down his biceps. “We are where we are. We’ll figure this all out, together. You were there for me during probably what was the hardest few days of my entire life. Fuck if I’m going to abandon you now to deal with this alone. _We will get through this_.”

Eames looks into his eyes searchingly in a way that _could_ make Arthur melt, make him turn into a puddle right there on his lap, but he holds steadfast, keeping his gaze steady and his face soft but stern. He needs Eames to know he’s serious, and he isn’t budging.

He and his mother can have more in common than he previously thought.

Eames’s shoulders drop after a while as he surrenders, leaning forward to press his forehead against Arthur’s and let his wine-soaked breath tickle his skin.

For a moment there’s silence, and then Eames lets out a defeated puff of air.

“I’m absolutely knackered. You?”

“I feel like I’ve been repeatedly hit by a train,” Arthur answers, stifling a yawn as if on cue. “So yes, same.”

Eames rumbles a laugh and Arthur slides off of him, grabbing his hands and heaving him to his feet.

“Bed now,” he leans up and whispers against Eames’s lips. “Bullshit tomorrow.”

“Sometimes, poppet,” Eames leans back so he can look at Arthur properly, a smirk forming on his lips, “you say the most wonderful things.”  

 

 

 

 

The day before, Cobb gives everyone the day off to “mentally prepare for the battle ahead”. Arthur and Eames both come to the mutual but unspoken agreement that the day should be spent in underwear, sprawled out on Eames’s couch while the rain, which never really stopped once it started, batters against every east-facing pane of glass in the cottage.

They don’t talk about the next day. As far as Arthur’s concerned, forever exists with them right where they are, with nothing else battling to get in.

When it starts to get darker outside, Eames grazes his fingertips against Arthur’s abdomen and hums.

“Hungry?” he asks. Arthur shrugs.

“I could eat.”

“I have an idea.”

Eames has that tone in his voice that Arthur knows all too well as mischievous and impulsive.

“That phrase never ends well coming out of your mouth…”

Eames grins deviously, reaching up to tussle his fingers through Arthur’s soft, loose hair.

“That phrase had a perfectly _happy ending_ earlier this morning, thank you very much. You can’t deny it or I’ll call your bluff.”

“I think my tailbone is bruised.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Eames clasps his hands together like some sort of mad scientist about to reveal some sort of evil, sinister plan, “I think we should have a sort of… final examination, tonight. See if our ‘tutoring sessions’ really paid off.”

Arthur narrows his eyes playfully. “You mean…”

“You cook dinner, I’ll pair the wine.”

Arthur thinks it’s funny, really. Instead of cowering from the idea like his old self from maybe two months ago certainly would, he stands and stretches, molding his lips into an easy smirk.

“Challenge,” he whispers, leaning down to press a kiss to Eames’s parted lips, “accepted.”

Eames stares at him dazed, like he can’t even _begin_ to believe his luck, and it makes Arthur want to do cartwheels. He dresses and sets out to the nearest market, and it’s only then that his smugness wears off and he realizes that he well and truly is incapable of cooking.

It’s a fact of his existence that has always confounded him.

He has an analytic mind. A mind that’s good at storing information, at finding solutions and putting things together. Cooking _should_ be easy for him. Cooking _should_ make sense.

But it doesn’t.

(Which, he knows, is partially why _Eames_ confounds him so much.)

As he wanders down the aisles, eyes scanning over the shelves of local organic ingredients, he tries to consider just _why_ Eames and his food makes no sense to him.

He supposes it’s the effortless way that flavors simply make sense in Eames’s mind. How they just seem to flow into one another, lacing together intricate equations from primal instincts. But he always starts with something he _knows_. First ingredient: familiarity. Comfort. Well-explored territory.

He walks to the back and grabs a cheap bottle of red wine from a small rack display; something he wouldn’t normally spend money to drink but isn’t swill.

The next most important factor, Arthur thinks, is a memory. Something that’s vivid and shines with a brilliance in his mind. Every time Eames talks about his life, he talks about it through food. ( _‘I used to holiday in the lake district with my parents when I was little… always bloody miserable, muddy and rainy but there was this pub in Keswick that made its own triple-cream soft cheese that was just… good enough to sacrifice your soul for_.’)

He finds an assorted basket of local mushrooms, still covered in earth and moss from when they were picked earlier that day, putting it in his cart.

Then, Arthur knows, there’s a certain amount of risk to every dish Eames makes. He’s an expert now – a seasoned expert, pun _not_ intended – but if he didn’t take risks, his food wouldn’t change and evolve like it does. It wouldn’t _taste_ like it does. It’s why Eames tests out recipes on him and carefully covets his opinions, because with every new dish there’s always a chance that it won’t work out.

His heart skips a beat when he sees a woman pick up the last jar of Arborio rice and thumb over the back label. He loiters, and like a sign, she sets it back on the shelf and walks off. Arthur grabs it quickly, like it has the ability to run away, and stuffs it in his basket.

Arthur’s never made risotto before (which truly isn’t saying much, as he’s barely ventured outside of scrambled eggs and stove-top ramen). It’s also something Eames has never made him – for Limbo or just for them – but it’s a food that always weighs heavy in Arthur’s memory.

He attaches it to his father, who used to make it for them every once in a while out of the box. Risotto was one of the foods his father loved because it needed wine to be decent. A risotto without wine was like a garden without flowers, his father used to say. He only used to make it in the autumn, when everyone in California decided it was time to eat warmer foods and pretend it was cool outside, but Arthur figures that a spring risotto is something that can and has been done.

Except he has no idea how to make risotto. But thankfully, that’s what the internet’s for.

After loading the ingredients he purchases into his car, he sits with the keys dangling in the ignition and googles YouTube videos of people making risotto because the foggy memories of his father are a bit too distant now, and he isn’t sure if he’s entirely ready to dredge them up yet anyway.

The videos seem complicated with a lot of steps, but oddly, he doesn’t feel intimidated. ‘Complicated’ and ‘a lot of steps’ are his specialties, and risotto is a part of him. A part he wants to share with Eames – which is maybe what makes Eames’s food so special. The need to share a part of himself with others; to make them understand.

When he gets back to the cottage, Eames is on him like a bloodhound the second he walks through the door, trying to peak into the paper bag he lugs in. Arthur sets it down on the counter and turns to him, offering up an easy smile.

“So,” Eames slides a finger in Arthur’s belt loop, “are you going to tell me what concoction you’re going to whip up so I can nip down to the wine store?”

Arthur pulls the Arborio rice, wild mushrooms, and wine out of the bag and sets them down on the counter, motioning to them before going to grab two pots and dig around in Eames’s freezer for his homemade chicken stock. After locating it, he turns to find Eames with a somewhat bemused expression on his face. It’s not quite disbelief, but it certainly shows that it wasn’t what he was expecting.

Maybe he expected Arthur to attempt a grilled cheese or spaghetti.

Arthur knows that risotto isn’t exactly a beginner’s sport.

“Right,” Eames clasps his hands, watching closely as Arthur plucks some fresh thyme off of the herb box hanging on the windowsill and snatches a lemon from the fridge. “I’ll be back in a wink.”

Arthur glances behind his shoulder, squeezing the frozen chicken stock slushy out of its container and into a sauce pan to warm. “Good luck.”

“And same to you, my love. Fire extinguisher’s just behind the fridge to the left… there’s a lad.” Before Arthur even has time to roll his eyes, Eames grabs his bike keys off the counter and bounds out the front door.

Arthur gets to work.

First it’s a waiting game. The chicken stock has to come up to temperature and get to a simmer. Arthur measures out a cup of rice and throws it in the other pan with some butter and olive oil, tossing them around a bit until they get golden brown with a nutty aroma. He prays he hasn’t burnt them, but the internet seems to tell him that this is _good_ , so he carries on.

He opens the wine and measures out a cup of it, adding it to the rice, before pouring himself a glass because fuck it – he may as well do this like his dad always did it. One for the rice; one for him.

 _One for you, Dad_ , Arthur thinks as he tosses back the wine (very acidic and dry – not Arthur’s favorite by any means, but would give the risotto more of a perfumed flavor. He wants the wine to shine.)

As he begins the ladle the hot broth into the rice, the memories of his dad come rushing back to him like some sort of breech in the fortified wall of heavy denial in his mind, and he finds himself overwhelmed with emotion; crying and laughing and smiling so wide it feels like his cheeks might split.

It’s almost like for a split second, his dad is there with him; a warm hand on his shoulder, the knowledge that he’s _proud_ of Arthur looming in the fragrant air.

And just like that, Arthur gets it. He _gets_ it.

Behind The Great Mystery of Eames and his Too-Good-For-This-World Cooking, behind every plate of impossible food Eames set out in front of him, was one simple truth:

Food is about love.

Cooking comes from the same place that kissing or hugging does: it’s an expression of love. And maybe Arthur struggled so much with it because the part of himself that processes love has only recently had the dust blown off of it.

And maybe it sounds like a corny one-liner from an old Julia Child TV program, but maybe he doesn’t care, because maybe that’s the perfect way to sum up his relationship with Eames anyway.

And maybe he wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

The rest of the meal comes together easily. Once all the stock is absorbed, Arthur sets the rice to a low simmer and goes about sautéing the mushrooms off in a separate pan with butter and the thyme, getting them to the point of _just_ tender before tossing them into the now-creamy rice.

Then, to finish it off, he grates in some parmesan he finds in Eames’s fridge (a massive block that looks like it might have been a gift from one of the ancient Italian cheese producers up in northern Italy that Eames waxed poetic about during their visit to Venice. It must have cost a _fortune_ ) and throws together a quick salad with some greens and balsamic vinegar he finds.

As if on cue Eames comes through the front door with a paper bag tucked under his arm and a smug smile on his face.

“Almost finished there, gorgeous?”

Arthur ladles the risotto into two bowls and sets them down next to the salad plates on the dining table. “Yes, just. You have scary-good timing, you know.”

Eames grins. “After gastronomy school in Paris and working at four posh restaurants, I have a pretty good understanding of how long it takes for a risotto to come together.”

“Well,” Arthur brushes his hands on a dish towel, straightening his shoulders and taking a deep breath, “we’ll see if it’s any good.”

“But first!” Eames sets the paper bag down on the table, going to fetch wine glasses. “Let’s see if I pass your test, hmm?”

Arthur lifts an eyebrow and sits in his chair as Eames sets a glass in front of him.

“Now,” Eames clears his throat, “I happened upon this at my local wine merchant and it was labeled as a ‘new addition’, and I’d never seen it before so I kind of figured it was a bit of a sign. And I did a quick google to see what other somms have said about it – the flavors and such – and decided upon this certain type.”

Arthur arches a brow as Eames fidgets nervously with the paper bag.

“I hope you don’t think it’s too…” Eames trails off.

“Too what?” Arthur frowns.

“Too _sappy_.”

Eames hands the paper bag over to Arthur, and the first thing he sees when he pulls the bottle out is the lacy gold font he used to spend hours tracing with grubby fingers as a kid.

 _‘Paradosso Wines_ ,’ it reads, sprawled against the black label; the sketch of a small red die imprinted into the paper below. Arthur’s mouth falls agape in disbelief. _‘Product of Sonoma, CA. 2013_ ’

“How did you… where did you _find_ this?”

“I told you, darling. At the merchant just up the road.”

“But I’ve been there a million times…”

“They said they just got it. Like I said-”

Arthur sets the bottle down and stands, wrapping his arms around Eames’s neck and kissing him before he has time to say another word, emotion bubbling up in his chest like a chemical reaction.

“Too sappy?” Eames whispers against his lips after a moment, and Arthur can’t do anything but laugh tearfully and shake his head. Eames smiles. “Right, brilliant, would you like to know why I chose the chardonnay?”

“Yes,” Arthur smiles and slides back down into his chair, letting Eames screw the cork out and pour him a glass. “Dazzle me with your incredible knowledge of wine.”

“Well,” Eames pours himself a glass and slides into his own chair, “I read online that this particular chardonnay was rather fruity and fresh tasting which works well with savory, creamy, starchy foods like risotto, _especially_ mushroom risotto. I also thought that the lightness would bring out the thyme I saw you grab and make it sing.” He pours himself a glass and sniffs it before holding it up to the light and swishing it around gently. He takes a sip, and Arthur sees him smile.

“You know, the French are a proud lot, but rather pretentious because of it. They all say Californian wine is shite, but I’d certainly beg to differ after this.”

Arthur swallows, picking up his own glass and holding it under his nose, inhaling.

If he’s being honest with himself, he hasn’t had a sip of his family’s wine since he left to pursue his dream. He had some sort of vendetta against it; some sort of sick belief that drinking it would taste like failure.

But now, he knows, he’s never tasted a sweeter wine.

He sets down his glass and smiles. “A-plus, Mister Eames. Congratulations, you’ve officially graduated from the Arthur Cohen School of Wine Tasting.”

Eames beams and tilts his glass at him, winking. “Right, now, let’s see how you’ve done in your exam, hmm?”

Arthur scratches the back of his head nervously, briefly panicked that it won’t be any good, briefly considering whether or not a quick blowjob would make Eames’s critique a little _easier_. He opens his mouth to suggest as much, but he’s too late. He watches in a sort of suspended horror as Eames gathers the risotto onto his spoon and lifts it, wrapping his lips around it. Arthur inhales and holds it.

For a moment, Eames chews thoughtfully, his eyes downcast; eyelashes brushing cheeks. But then, like the flicker of a flame, his eyes are on Arthur with a sort of tenderness.

“Love,” he says after swallowing his mouthful. “This risotto… it’s _wonderful_.”

Arthur shifts in his chair, lighting up. “Really?”

“Yes… it’s as good of a risotto as I could ever make. Better, even. Swear up and down,” he adds when he sees Arthur shoot him an incredulous look. “I promise you that this risotto… _this risotto_ will be on the menu when I open my own restaurant. And I shall call it ‘Arthur’s Risotto’ and it will be the most popular dish on the menu.”

Arthur feels his cheeks burning and takes a bite himself, impressed with the taste himself but mostly just happy that it’s officially Eames-approved.

“My dad used to make me risotto when I was little,” Arthur says. “I wanted to make it as a sort of tribute to him. Because that’s what cooking’s about, isn’t it? Memories, emotions… love.”

“Ah, there it is.” Eames beams. “Your senior thesis. Well, you’ve passed with flying colors. Yes, darling. _Yes_ , that’s what it’s all about. That’s all it’s ever been about.” He raises his glass, tilting it forward slightly. “To Arthur’s father, whom I never got the chance to meet, but to whom I’m so very grateful, for raising such a wonderful son.”

Arthur raises his own glass, reaching across to clink it against Eames’s.

“To my dad,” he echoes, taking a sip.

“To _love_ ,” Eames adds pointedly, winking before bringing the glass to his lips.

 _Yes… love_ , Arthur thinks as he lets the tart wine slide down his throat and warm him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Important Additional Warnings: Canon character death, mental illness, suicide**
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> Thanks once again to my incredible beta, [Amy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb), for being the best and helping me get through this incredibly difficult-to-write chapter.

The morning of the Michelin dinner, Arthur presses snooze on the first four of the alarms he’d set on his phone. The fifth one, however, rouses Eames, who manages to lift his head from where it was tucked into Arthur’s neck and groan softly.

“Mm… time issit?” he croaks, and Arthur snatches his phone and silences it, cracking his eyes open blearily to look at the time.

“Almost eleven.” He buries his face back into Eames’s hair, smiling to himself. No matter what position they fall asleep in, they always end up utterly tangled into each other by morning. The addition of Eames in his life has completely fucked (literally rather than figuratively) the sleep schedule he’s grown so used to. Waking up at eleven used to seem like something only lazy people do. He hadn’t accounted for the fact that it could also be something happy people do. “We should probably get up.”

“Or we could… not,” Eames suggests, and it’s only when the leg hitched up across Arthur’s hips tightens that he realizes it was even there in the first place. “What do you think, darling? Pretend nothing else exists and stay in bed?”

Arthur, despite himself, actually considers it. “I think Cobb would murder us.”

“Ariadne would likely murder me first,” Eames muses. “She knows where I keep all my expensive carving knives and she’s wicked with a blender. She’d make it painful and slow.”

“You’ve definitely thought about this before,” Arthur mutters, managing to wriggle himself free of Eames’s koala-like hold on him, sitting up. “Which is a sign that we should maybe _not_ let that happen, and that we should get up and actually do our jobs.”

Eames lets out a pathetic moan, grabbing after Arthur with clumsy hands, which Arthur narrowly manages to dodge on his way to the bathroom.

When he gets out of the shower and dresses, he finds Eames making them eggs on toast in the kitchen, his bare back looking like it was carved from milky marble in the grey-blue light from the skylights above.

“Did you have a lovely shower?” Eames says as Arthur slides his hands around his waist, basking in the contrast of Eames’s skin against Arthur’s bespoke suit.

“Yes. A bit lonely, though.”

Eames smiles and turns, holding up the wooden spoon coated in delicious creamy scrambled eggs. Arthur obligingly slides his tongue up the curve of it – a motion which Eames follows closely with a hooded gaze. “Ah, yes, missed opportunities. But I thought we could both get some sustenance in us after our _activities_ last night, and then maybe after we’ve recouped some calories and electrolytes and whatnot, we can have a roll around for good luck?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “You always wait until I’m all dressed for work.”

“Mussing you is half the fun, love.” Eames smirks and reaches up to clean a crumb of egg off of the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “I like to see you later looking all professional and divine and knowing that you’ve been thoroughly debauched. It will give me such _strength_ in this trying time.”

Arthur pulls Eames’s mouth to his, quite content with settling for a long, slow egg-flavored kiss, but it’s then that there’s a frantic knocking at the door cutting right through the moment like a train tumbling into a building.

Eames looks startled, shoving the wooden spoon in Arthur’s hand. “Hold that thought. Don’t let breakfast burn, I’ll be back in a flash.”

He takes off and leaves Arthur to stare down at the curding eggs, straining to listen for what he expects to be Mal’s sobs. Instead, he hears the door close, and then he hears a man’s voice that isn’t Eames’s. It’s American, and the shock of it is enough to cause Arthur to turn off the burner and stumble into the main room.

In front of Eames stands a man about his height with about his build, his hair and eyes much lighter and his features much more delicate. He resembles the sort of ethereal portrayals of humans and gods in old romantic-era artwork with skin that looks almost too much like porcelain to be real and eyes that seem to shine by themselves.

Seeing Robert Fischer in the flesh makes Arthur understand instantly why Eames fell so in love with him back when they were young.

“Darling,” Eames turns to find him lingering in the kitchen doorway, and he knows his posture is much too stiff to look natural, his eyes a little _too_ bright, “this is Robert Fischer. Robert, this is Arthur, the sommelier at Limbo, and my boyfriend.”

Arthur musters up a smile and steps forward, offering Fischer his hand. He isn’t petty and jealous. _He isn’t petty and jealous_. And yet, there’s an itch in the back of his mind, telling him to be on edge. He doesn’t know _when_ he became so territorial of Eames. He didn’t even know that quality existed in him before. Of course he knows it’s all ridiculous; if there’s one thing he’s sure of in his life, it’s Eames. They’re too old for suspicion. That went straight out the window the moment Eames booked the ticket to fly out to California to be with him.

Fischer smiles tightly and takes Arthur’s hand, giving it a single firm shake.

“Arthur, good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of buzz about you in the culinary scene.” He looks back at Eames, his smile tightening ever so slightly. “Eames, I was hoping I could talk to you in _private_ …”

Eames crosses his arms and glances back at Arthur, but Arthur shakes his head, frowning.

“If it’s about Mal, I know everything, and I want to help,”

Fischer blinks at Arthur in a way that makes Arthur feel like he’s crossed some sort of invisible line.

Eames clears his throat. “Is it about Mal, Robbie?”

 _Robbie_ , Arthur thinks with a forlorn, inward sigh, before settling onto the arm of the sofa. _Thank god he doesn’t call me ‘Artie’_.

“Yes, actually,” Fischer brushes his hands over his thighs as he takes a seat, eying Arthur wearily, “Mal called me last night. It was so startling that I decided to fly out… I tried calling, but your phone was off.”

“I was busy last night,” Eames says dismissively, failing to mention what he was busy _doing_ (spoiler: it was Arthur). “What did Mal say to you?”

“It was so _weird_ …” Fischer begins, running his hands over his face, “we haven’t spoken in years. I mean, she called me when she was opening Limbo back up, trying to get me to invest… but since then, I haven’t heard a peep. But last night she… it was like she was under some kind of trance, Eames. She sounded like a hostage with a gun to her head, but I knew that couldn’t be the case, because what she was saying was of no consequence. She talked about us, the three of us, and how _great_ everything was in Paris. She talked about how our fairytale future was about to come true, and that it would all be okay…”

Eames sucks in a deep breath, holding it for a beat before releasing it and nodding, scrubbing his fingers through his hair. “I’ve heard that tone in her voice before... you’re right, it _is_ weird. Something’s off, and maybe what she needs is both of us intervening. It was good of you to come.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Fischer interjects, leaning forward.

“You should both go to her place. Try and catch her there before tonight. Talk to her, convince her that if we don’t get the third star, it isn’t the end of the world. Ask her to get help,” Arthur suggests quietly.

Fischer nods and turns to Eames. “That sounds reasonable…”

“We ought to head over there, then.” Eames is on his feet in milliseconds, fetching his coat from the rack. “Arthur, if Dom’s there, cover for me, will you? Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can. And tell Ariadne to take over until I get there. She knows the prep for dinner tonight probably better than I do, she’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Arthur says, standing up after them and following them to the door. “Text me, okay?”

“Right,” Eames says as he pats himself down, making sure he has his phone. He smiles when he locates it. “I’ll see you later.” He places a kiss in the corner of his lips and turns, heading out to where Fischer’s driver is waiting in a black SUV with tinted windows. _Jesus_ , Arthur thinks.

Arthur watches them go before heading back into the kitchen to try and salvage the now-dry eggs and toast so he can have something in his sour, anxious stomach before tonight. Especially since he likely won’t be eating until after it’s all said and done.

He knows the special. He’s known for weeks. Eames had brought together entire kitchen staff as well as Arthur to discuss what they all thought the menu should look like. Eames, of course, had the final decision (which he made late one night, whispered in bed with Arthur): seared fillet mignon with goose pâté served with a raspberry and sage-infused buerre blanc, fire-roasted white asparagus, and bone marrow mashed potatoes. Simple, elegant, but completely and utterly _Eames_. Unmistakably so. And, for once, it was constructed in _collaboration_ with him, so his wine pairing has existed since its inception. He chose a bone-dry merlot that tasted like a campfire in an oak forest. Arthur had tried it for the first time while he was getting his education in wine, and the flavor of it had influenced his palette ever since.

Knowing the game-plan for that night, however, gives Arthur more free-time than he’d ever hope for – more time to worry – so he wastes no time in finishing getting dressed (sans jacket, which he keeps in pressed in a garment bag that he carefully lays across his back seat) and heading to the restaurant. He figures that after he informs Ariadne that she’ll be on her own for a while (which she’ll likely blow a casket over), he can make himself useful in some other way.

The problem with _knowing_ the wine means that the hours ahead are empty. He ordered extra bottles in the week before, and they’re due to arrive that afternoon, just before the rush. He knows it’s cutting it close, but he knows the guy that delivers the wine and he’s never been even so much as a moment late before.

 

 

 

When he arrives, he finds Cobb harassing the wait staff about the proper etiquette of greeting patrons. He manages to pull him aside.

“Eames has some business he had to get to tonight… it’s important. He’ll be here as soon as he possibly can.”

Arthur watches in horror as Cobb’s face first goes sheer white and then turns a hideous shade of purple.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he explodes in Arthur’s face, and Arthur stands his ground despite wanting to be anywhere and everywhere other than where he is right then.

“He’s sorry. He’ll be here tonight.”

“You… he…” Cobb seems to calm slightly, his fists clenched icy white by his sides. “You _tell_ him that if he doesn’t get here before we open tonight that he’s done. He’s done, got it?”

A million things run through Arthur’s head that he wants to say. _‘Is that a threat? Threaten Eames again and I’ll use that hideous polyester tie to strangle the life out of you’_ and then of course there’s the much more logical and reasonable ‘ _Yes, sir’_ , but instead what comes out in a biting, venomous tone is:

“Do you even have any idea where your wife is?”

Cobb stares at him, dumbstruck, before sputtering and shaking his head.

“She took a walk to town this morning. She’ll be here. Why? Why is that relevant? Why are you even still talking to me? Don’t you have fucking work to do, Arthur?”

Arthur has nothing to say in response that won’t get him fired or arrested, so he simply turns on his heel and heads to the kitchen. He pulls out his phone and sends Eames a quick text – ‘ _Cobb last saw Mal this morning, she said she was going to walk to town_ ’ – before sliding through the swinging door to deliver Eames’s previous message to Ariadne. As he expected, she has a silent moment of rage that involves clenching her tiny fists and mouthing something that looks like ‘ _I’m going to castrate him and serve it for appetizers’_. Once it dissipates, she puts Arthur to work peeling potatoes, as if punishing him will somehow punish Eames as well. Arthur can’t quite bring himself to mind though, working while sitting on a stool, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. His mind is too flighty to occupy himself, and the physical work gives his hands something to do other than fidget needlessly, or worse, text Eames for an update.

The hours tick by regardless, however. Arthur volunteers to snap the ends off of asparagus, and none of the kitchen staff seem to mind his presence too much.

When four o’clock rolls around, Arthur starts to worry. Just a little, because he _knows_ Eames has this under control, but it’s still there like an itch at the back of his brain.

Nash, the saucier (or: guy who’s in charge of making all the sauces) whom Arthur’s never particularly liked due to his sneering way of dishing out gossip and condescension, approaches him from behind and leans casually against the counter beside him, a smirk on his lips that Arthur wants to use the paring knife he’s using on the asparagus to cut off.

“So,” Nash begins, his smirk widening, “I heard Robert Fischer’s in town.”

“Yes,” Arthur snaps, not dignifying him so much as to look at him. “He is. I met him this morning.”

“You know he and Eames-”

“Yes.”

When Arthur glances up, he finds that Nash’s infuriating expression hasn’t even fallen a little bit, which means there’s more.

“You know what I _heard_ …”

“Please enlighten me,” Arthur drones.

“You probably know more about this than I do,” Nash smirks, “but I heard that Eames signed a contract to leave Limbo and start working for Fischer at his new restaurant. Apparently they were starting their relationship back up or were about to… but then you came along. So good on you, I guess. But that absolutely _can’t_ be true, right? Everything with the contract? He’s with _you_. And where _is_ Eames, anyway…?”

Arthur knits his brows despite himself and looks back down at the bucket of asparagus to avoid showing any sort of emotion in front of Nash, because he _knows_ it would spread around the kitchen like wildfire and that’s the last thing he – or Eames – needs right now.

But the implications of this are massive, if there’s any truth to them. Arthur can’t deny it.

He’d sort of figured that he might have had a role in Eames choosing to stay ever since Saito had given him that cryptic speech on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t something he’d even considered before to feel guilty about, because maybe his own happiness was blinding him against the reality that Eames could have given up one of the biggest opportunities of his life, to work for a three star restaurant, to choose to be with him.

But… _no_. He chose to stay. _He chose to stay_. Arthur knows Nash is probably full of shit, and that no such contract exists, but something about it scrapes at the anxiety already bubbling up inside him from everything else happening, making his chest tight. He lets out an exasperated sigh at himself and shakes his head. Eames would have _told_ him if such a contract existed, because contracts in the restaurant world are a sort of existential bond that one’s entire career depends upon. Especially when you’re a hot commodity like Eames is. Contracts are easy to break, just as simple as quitting, but if you break the wrong contract with the wrong person, your professional life could be ruined forever. Arthur learned this the wrong way when he wanted to quit his first high-end job and had to hire a lawyer to oversee the arrangement after being told, by his former boss, that his resume would forever have a big “DO NOT HIRE” written on front.

If Eames had signed a contract that would go into effect this summer, when his contract with Limbo likely ends, he would be worrying about getting out of it. He would have _told him_.

And then there’s the implication with Robert himself… Robert and Eames. Eames and Robert. _Robbie_.

“Interesting,” he says when he remembers Nash is still standing there, waiting for a response. Nash just chuckles foully, and Arthur knows he’s getting off on making him squirm.

“See you around, Arthur.”

Arthur doesn’t answer, or look up, or acknowledge that the conversation has affected him in any way. He won’t let Nash get that satisfaction or any tidbit that he can go and gossip about to everyone else. If he comes off as an emotionless prick, then so be it.

 _It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. You will not confront Eames about this. He would have told you_ , a stern voice in the back of his mind instructs him.

He keeps working.

 

 

 

Four turns into five: half an hour before doors open. A waiter runs in and informs Arthur that the wine’s arrived and it’s sitting in a crate behind the wine bar. This information does nothing to calm his disquieted mind.

As if on cue to ease the rising panic surging through Arthur and reverberating back at him from the rest of the kitchen staff, Eames bursts through the swinging door. Arthur’s panic is calmed for approximately .5 seconds, however, and surges again at the look on Eames’s face.

“Arthur,” he says urgently, “can I speak to you out back?”

Arthur tosses the handful of wet asparagus he was holding back down into the bucket, wiping his pruned fingers on the apron he has tied around his waist, and follows him. Cobb stays behind, glancing dumbstruck around the kitchen, looking clammy.  

“What is it?” Arthur asks once they’re alone, furrowing his brow as Eames runs a shaky hand through his hair.

“We can’t bloody find her,” Eames chokes out. “It’s like she’s up and fucking vanished.”

“Whoa, slow down… _what_? You can’t _find_ her?”

“We’ve looked everywhere. Robert’s off looking for her right now. Looked everywhere we could think of… we came back here now because we couldn’t stay away any longer, and we figured she could be here, even though I convinced Robert that you would have texted me if you’d have seen her… of course you would have…”

Eames’s voice sounds like he’s teetering on a razor’s edge of panic, and Arthur’s protective instincts kick straight into gear.

“Eames.” His hands fly up to Eames’s shoulders, and he stares hard at him until Eames looks up and finds his gaze. “Breathe. No, I haven’t seen her, but we’ll find her.”  

“We have no time. People are about to start showing up… I have to go make sure none of my staff has fucked anything royally…”

“Have you called the police?”

Eames exhales loudly through his nose, shaking his head. “No, but it’s too early to file a missing persons report. You said she was last seen this morning…”

“Maybe, but we have reason to believe she might be a danger to herself. That’s cause enough for them to help.”

Arthur reaches up to touch Eames’s face, offer him some sort of reassurance even if the unsureness sitting in the pit of his own stomach makes him uneasy and gives him a bitter taste in his mouth. “We should tell Cobb.”

“He wouldn’t believe me or care,” Eames answers quietly. “That much I know.”

Arthur considers, briefly, suggesting they call the whole thing off. It would surely ruin both their careers (well, ruin _his_ , maybe give Eames a minor professional set-back), but obviously Mal’s well-being is more important.

But then, wouldn’t that set Mal off even more, if she came _this close_ to that third star only to have it all ruined?

“What do you want to do?” he asks Eames cautiously, deciding that the burden of choice can fall on both of their shoulders.

Eames glances up at him with trepidation before sighing. “I’ll ring the police.”

Before Arthur even has a chance to agree, Cobb bursts through the back door, looking about sixty notches beyond flustered.

“Arthur! Has the wine arrived yet?”

Arthur blinks. Cobb’s expression reads pure anxious energy, but not even a shred of worry or fear. Eames is right. He doesn’t care.

“Yes. The bottles are behind the wine counter. But Dom-”

“Eames, good of you to finally join us. Not like all our careers are on the line or anything,” Cobb shoots at Eames, who simply glowers back at him.

“Yes,” Eames mutters, “well, I was-“

“Great,” Cobb clasps his hands together and beams like a four year old that was just told Christmas was the next day, “Let’s do this, then, shall we?”

He turns to hightail it back to the front of the restaurant. For a split second, Arthur and Eames just stare at each other in shock. Then, like watching the seasons change, Arthur sees Eames’s expression slowly turn to anger – no. Rage. White-hot, prickly rage that turns his eyes a dark, stormy grey.

“That fucking _useless_ waste of goddamn space… I’m going to _ruin him_ …” Eames turns and heads back into the restaurant, flinging the back door open with such force that it slams back against the brick wall, causing Arthur to almost jump out of his skin. He follows once he regains his bearings, hoping he doesn’t have to try to hold Eames back alone. He isn’t sure he could; Eames charging through the kitchen looks like a loose Spanish bull looking for someone to gouge. Ariadne barely dodges him, somehow managing to keep ahold of her massive armful of saran-wrapped meat. She gives Arthur a _what the fuck?_ look that he doesn’t have time to respond to.

He busts through the swinging kitchen door, ready to lunge, only to find Eames frozen in place just in front of him. Arthur side-steps him and grabs ahold of his arm, getting a clear view of what he’s looking at.

Cobb’s leaning on one of the tables with his fists, looming over where Robert Fischer and _Saito_ are both sitting calmly. Well, Fischer doesn’t look _calm_ , per say, but rather _terrified_. His shoulders are hunched and he’s fidgeting with the tablecloth. Arthur immediately remembers his drunken New Years Eve conversation with Saito, about how Fischer’s father and Saito were enemies.

“Mr. Eames,” Saito pipes up in his silky cool voice, “Good of you to join us. I was just asking Mr. Fischer to what we owe the pleasure of his presence here tonight. I highly doubt his father would sink so low as to send his only son here to sabotage one of my most popular restaurants on the night of its Michelin visit…”

Arthur senses Eames go tense beside him.

“As I was _trying_ to explain to you, Mr. Saito,” Fischer cuts in, “I came here because I received a really strange phone call from Mallorie that made me nervous. I wanted to try and help. Which we need to be doing _right now_ instead of sitting around…”

“Fischer’s right,” Eames interjects, stepping forward. “Screw the bloody Michelin star. Mal’s not well. She needs help, and maybe you weren’t around, Dom, when she lost her mother, but if you were, you’d know that she’s in trouble. Maybe if you _knew your wife at all_ …”

“Enough!” Cobb slams his knuckles down so hard against the table that the silverware and plates bounce against each other and fall into disarray. “Mal’s fine, goddammit. She’ll be here! We have to _focus_!”

The last word he says is hushed, because in that moment, the front doors swing open as the hosts begin filing in patrons with reservations to their tables. Cobb slides into a seat, his face pale.

“She’s _not_ fine,” Eames steps forward and snarls through gritted teeth. “You’d know that if you paid a single scrap of fucking attention to her…”

“Perhaps, Mr. Eames,” Saito interjects, his eyes suddenly, inexplicably, on _Arthur_ , “Mrs. Cobb is simply upset because her star chef and best friend was planning on abandoning her, _again_ , for Mr. Fischer.”

For a moment, everything is still. Saito doesn’t take his eyes off of Arthur, and Arthur tries as hard as he can to keep his resolve, to remain impassive, regardless of the fact that the world feels like it’s dissolving beneath his feet. Everything else flies out of his mind, then, including Mal. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Eames doesn’t look back at him, but his shoulders slump nonetheless. Saito’s lips curl into a smirk.

“Ah yes, gentleman. I was very much hoping the rumors weren’t true, but as I pulled up and saw Mr. Fischer lurking around outside and he told me his story of how Mrs. Cobb had contacted him last night with a worrying phone call, I made a few phone calls of my own and discovered that his plane ticket had been booked for ten days. Further investigation confirmed that his father sent him here as a sort of saboteur, to try and force Eames to hold true to a contract he’d signed last year about transferring as the head chef of Catharsis.”

Arthur’s looking fully at Eames now, because this _can’t_ be real, only to find Eames staring at Fischer with harsh eyes. Fischer looks down.

“She did call me. And she is in trouble. And _that’s_ why I’m here, end of story. Ced, c’ _mon_ , you _know_ me. You can’t honestly believe this…”

Eames stays silent. Saito tsks.

“Using Mrs. Cobb’s mental illness as a way to manipulate Mr. Eames… Clever, Mr. Fischer, I’ll admit. I had no idea you were as much of a scoundrel as your father. It was all very calculated, wasn’t it? Did your father call up his Michelin _friends_ to figure out the exact date, or did Mr. Eames supply that information to you himself?” Saito pivots so his gaze falls on Eames, cool and abrasive. “Were you in on it as well, wanting this operation to fail so your summer departure, as specified in the contract my lawyers uncovered, would be better received?”

And just like that, Arthur feels like the world’s spiraling beneath him and he has no way of holding on. Eames _did_ have plans to leave… _does_ have plans to leave. The contract exists.

Eames stays still and silent. Arthur wants to get in front of him and gauge his expression, question how he could ever keep this from him, question what was _real_.

Fischer clenches his fists, his jaw going tight. “The intentions of my trip changed last minute. Sue me. I’m still here, right now, for Mal. I can speak for Eames when I say that those are his current concerns as well.”

“God _dammit_!” Cobb stands again, yelling in a way that’s still technically a whisper even though the various guests start to glance over with stunned eyes. “Tell me this is all bullshit, Eames.”

“I can explain everything,” Eames says quietly. Arthur feels like he can’t breathe.

Cobb narrows his eyes dangerously. “My wife isn’t _sick_. Now we’re going to get through this fucking night without incident, okay? Then we’ll discuss… _this_ later. Arthur, go fucking start serving wine, it’s what I _pay you for_ , is it not?”

Arthur brushes past Eames, who bristles a bit as if he didn’t even realize Arthur was standing right behind him. He doesn’t look back. Instead, he plucks his suit jacket off of the chair from behind the wine bar and slides it over his shirt, making sure his cuffs aren’t wrinkled and his collar’s straight. Then, he straightens his back and puts on his best passive, indifferent sommelier face – the one he practiced in the mirror for years and years and _years_ just to get it perfect – and pulls a bottle out of the crate below him, carefully unscrewing the cork.

Then he takes off to go table-to-table, offering tastes of the wine as everyone decides on their meal. He knows they have no idea who the Michelin person will _be_ , exactly, so he’s the exact same with every single person. And he’s the goddamn best.

“Arthur,” Eames says as he passes him, grazing fingertips against Arthur’s arm, but Arthur doesn’t stop or even acknowledge him. The hurt sits deep in his chest but he ignores it. In his peripheral vision, he sees Eames slump and head back through the swinging door into the kitchen.

Arthur’s brain goes terrifyingly quiet. The thoughts seem to speed into his brain at light speed only to be immediately crushed into the back, into a ‘deal with later’ pile. Compartmentalized. Ignored.

Soon enough, the food starts coming out from the kitchen and bringing along with it glorious, savory scents. Arthur starts going through bottles at a pace he needs the wait staff to help him with, though he’s confident in their abilities to pour properly.

Eventually, at around seven, a solitary patron enters and takes a seat by a window, her glasses sitting low on her nose as she pulls out a notebook and sets it in front of her on the table. Arthur thinks it’s kind of hilarious how a small woman in her mid-sixties seems like she holds the weight of the entire universe just in her notebook. He snags a fresh bottle of the merlot and heads over to her.

“Bonsoir, Madame,” he says confidently with a smile. “May I pour you a sample of the merlot I’ve selected to go alongside our special tonight?”

She eyes him gently, the corner of her lips twitching in a way that makes Arthur feel scrutinized.

“Ah,” she says with a crisp French accent, “yes, I will be having the special. But I’m not a fan of merlot. It’s a superior pairing for the dish, but it is a little too dry for my tastes. Could you, possibly, dig into your reserves and find something more… silky? Price is not an issue.”

Arthur blinks, his mind momentarily reverting back to the same panic he used to feel every single night upon receiving Eames’s special. 

“I… um, yes, absolutely, I will go see what I can find in the cellar.”

He knows it’s a test. A good somm needs to be able to think on their feet, flip through pairings, flavor profiles, and vintages in their mind like most people flip through the pages of their favorite book. By the time he reaches the wine bar to return the bottle he has, he already has a few options he’s considering.

Hence why he barely notices Eames there waiting for him.

“Arthur,” he says sternly, “we have to talk. _Now_. It isn’t what you think it is.”

Arthur stares at him with as much blankness and indifference as he can muster, his insides tightening uncomfortably inside of him.

“So… it _isn’t_ that you signed a contract to leave and move to London and never told me about it…?”

Eames flinches, avoiding his eyes.

“Well, yes, that’s technically true, but you have to understand that I-”

“Save it, Eames,” Arthur says coolly. “We can deal with this later. The Michelin lady’s here and I have to go find a different bottle for her because she’s testing me and doesn’t want the pre-selected wine. And you need to go in there and lead your kitchen staff. They need you.”

“Arthur, please.” Eames inhales sharply. “I wanted to tell you, but only after I’d resolved it. I’ve been trying to resolve it since it happened… since I met you.”

“Don’t let me hold you back from this definitive career move,” Arthur says bitingly. Eames looks hurt, which doesn’t bring Arthur any of the satisfaction he thought it would.

“We’ll discuss this tonight, alright? I’ll tell you everything. Just give me a chance to explain myself.”

Arthur focuses his eyes on his feet, nodding. Of course Eames deserves the chance to explain. Of course he deserves Arthur’s forgiveness. These are just things Arthur can’t comprehend at the moment with the incredible amount of stress suddenly placed on his shoulders.

“Alright. Okay. _Okay_. Just… good luck,” he says quickly, brushing past Eames and heading over to the cellar door.

It isn’t until he’s inside and closing it behind himself that he realizes how much he’d been missing the quiet stillness of the cellar. It’s as if all the strain automatically is driven out of his body and replaced with a sort of hollow, cool calm that gives him the ability to breathe properly again. He’s grateful for it. He wants to run back upstairs and thank the Michelin lady for sending him down here herself, though he figures he can show his gratitude by finding her the most incredible wine pairing of all time.

By the time he reaches the bottom step, he knows he’s going to take a risk that could potentially sink everything, or could elevate him to the level of greatness he knows they can reach. The level of greatness he knows _he_ can reach. The reason Limbo only received two stars before was because of the wine pairings. He could do it this time. He _can_ do it this time.

The jittery excitement he was starting to feel in lieu of all of the other shitty feelings vying for his attention is immediately forgotten once his brain catches up with exactly what his eyes are seeing when he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

The floors, the walls, _everything_ is stained red. Shattered glass liters every visible inch of the cellar he can see, sticking up from the ground like jagged flowers trying to rise up from the dust. Every single bottle, it seems, in the entire collection, has been shattered to pieces.

The shock of it hits Arthur in waves, first causing his mouth to fall agape, and then causing him to stumble backwards. It’s then that he notices a pair of legs sticking out from behind one of the now-empty wine racks, covered in cuts and dried wine.

He knows immediately who it is.

“Mal,” he says cautiously, stepping carefully between patches of glassless ground. No response. He picks up his speed, swearing gently as a piece of glass curls from under his foot and slices into his ankle. He tries to ignore the way he can feel the thick, hot liquid seep down into his shoe and wet his sock cold.

Finally he gets to her. Her mop of soft brown waves is smeared across her forehead, her head leaning back against an old, cracked oak wine barrel. She’s wearing a black dress that’s riding up her thighs a bit and her heels have been kicked aside carelessly, the heel strap of her right one twisted around her big toe.

“Mal,” he says again, a bit louder, rushing to squat down in front of her. She blinks one bleary eye open and smiles at him.

“Arthur,” she says in a soft, slurred voice, her head rolling gently down to rest on her shoulder, “do you know why wine is so much like a human?”

Arthur sees, then, just how dilated her pupils are: like black pits floating in two endless expanses of icy blue ocean. He reaches over for the hand bent behind her back and finds an empty orange prescription bottle clutched in her fist. The panic grips at his chest. “Oh God, Mal, what have you done?”

He hurriedly pulls her arms over his neck, gets a good grip around her waist, and hoists her weight onto his shoulder. He gasps out in pain as the piece of glass digs deeper into his ankle.

“Wine and humans… we both have to _breathe_ , Arthur, before we can be any good. Before anyone will care about us. If we don’t have time to breathe, people will just… throw us away… like sour water.”

Arthur can barely make out her words anymore; he focuses on his feet, on trying to step over the glass as fast as possible. When a piece of glass pierces through his shoe and into his foot, he lets out a strangled cry and nearly drops her. She laughs.

“I’ll tell you one reason wine and humans are not similar, Arthur. They say wine gets better with time. I can tell you right now that for humans… that’s a _fucking_ lie.”

He can feel her going limp against him as he staggers toward the stairs, each step triggering the worst pain he’s ever felt in his life. When he finally reaches the stairs, he musters all his strength to ascend them, gingerly stepping with only his toes on his left foot. When he reaches the door, he slams his fist against it and screams.

“HELP! _Au secours!_ We need help! Somebody, _please_!”

His own voice sounds foreign and shrill to him, cracking frantically out of its usual deep tone and ripping through his throat. Carefully, he sets Mal down on the top step and leans her against the stone wall, his heart racing when he notices she simply just slumps against it listlessly.

“Mal,” he pats her face frantically, shaking her shoulders a bit. “Shit.” Turning to the door, he swings it open and staggers a couple steps out into the now jam-packed restaurant floor.

“HELP!” he yells again, and this time everyone goes silent and stares at him. “Somebody call 112. Ask for an ambulance. Immediately, _please_!”

Arthur watches as several cell phones light up at various tables, and sees the kitchen door swing open so fast it slams and rattles the wall behind it, Eames bursting out of it, followed closely by Ariadne, Nash, and Yusuf. When Eames sees Arthur, his eyes grow wide and he rushes to him, shoving aside a table as he goes, the young couple sitting there gasping as a plate goes unceremoniously crashing to the ground. When Eames reaches him, it takes everything Arthur has not to simply collapse into him and instead shove him in the direction of the door.

“It’s Mal. She’s overdosed on something. I don’t know. _Help her_.”

Eames gives him a strained, urgent look before flinging the cellar door open. When he reemerges with Mal’s limp form, Yusuf rushes over from the kitchen and helps him sit her against a wall.

“An ambulance is on the way,” someone says from the back of the room. Another patron, a middle-aged man with dark skin and greying hair, rushes forward and drops to his knees beside her.

“I’m a doctor,” he says to Eames, who instinctively tries to shove him away before he understands who he is. The doctor sets to work, checking Mal’s vitals before gently lying her down on the floor and beginning to administer CPR.

Eames, in the meantime, crawls back over to where Arthur sits on the floor. Arthur hadn’t even realized he’d sunk into a sitting position, but it must’ve happened at some point. Eames’s hands hover above Arthur’s right ankle, which is visibly soaked in blood, and then move over his left foot, which is now surrounded by a small pool of blood, and he winces, helpless to do anything about the current state of Arthur. Arthur shakes his head. He should not be the focus right now.

They both turn when the door swings open to reveal Cobb, who automatically pales. Eames stands slowly and Arthur can see his jaw go tight. He points one shaking finger over to the doctor trying to resuscitate Mal, who’s turned white as a sheet and looks… well…

“Not ill, hmm, Dom? Don’t worry about her, yeah? Oh _yes_ , Dom, she’s perfectly fine. She’s _perfectly fucking fine_ , isn’t she? _Isn’t she_?” His voice gets louder and more frantic as he speaks. By the end he’s practically spitting, his face flushed a deep pink.

Cobb stares at Eames and stays perfectly silent, and then Arthur watches as his eyes slowly scan down to his wife’s body, and then, inexplicably, they move toward the table in the back corner. To the table which still harbors the Michelin woman.

And, Arthur assumes, that does it for Eames. He lunges, lands one solid fist right into Cobb’s cheek, which is met with a disgustingly unpleasant cracking sound and followed by Cobb crying out in pain, before Yusuf and a couple of other patrons manage to hold Eames back.

After that, there’s a lot more screaming and swearing and anguish, but Arthur doesn’t hear it or see it. In that moment, even through the pain, his mind exists in a vacuum, and all he can see is the limp, lifeless body of a once vibrant, lovely woman lying like a statue against the hardwood floor. There’s a ringing in his ears, which slowly intensifies until he realizes that it’s not in his ears at all. Shortly after that, the restaurant is illuminated in flashing blue lights. He knows, deep down, they’re too late. He felt her die in his arms as he carried her up the stairs. _He felt her die_.

When he faints, he isn’t sure if it’s from the pain he doesn’t feel, the loss of blood, or the knowledge that Mal was clinging to him when the life left her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **FEW IMPORTANT NOTES:**
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> 
> Firstly, I have no clue how receiving Michelin stars actually works. I did some research on it, and I don't think what I wrote really aligns with the real process (plus the fact that they're super secretive holy hell), so just imagine that this is a world in which a Michelin star is given out by one person showing up at the restaurant and giving it a review. That's how it works in movies... right??? ;) 
> 
> Second, I also have NO IDEA how contracts in the restaurant business really work either, but I decided to make it more cut-throat because we're dealing with Saito and Maurice Fischer here... some shady stuff must go on, y'know? 
> 
> Third, I'm sorry to those of you who wanted Mal to live. **This is not, however, the end**. There is one more full chapter and an epilogue on its way. Hang tight, folks. 
> 
> Lastly, thank you thank you thank you for your continued support on this fic. I officially hit 50k words and 100 pages on my word document and I can safely say that this is the longest thing I've ever written by myself. I didn't start this fic thinking I would get there, but alas, your amazing comments and interest have shaped and pushed this story places I never thought it would go. I'm not gonna get all mushy yet... there's still more to come! just... thanks. :)


	9. Chapter 9

Arthur wakes in Eames’s bed, feeling dazed and sedated. The first thing he becomes aware of is the dull, throbbing pain in his left foot, which he’s automatically grateful isn’t the searing white-hot pain it was before. For a quiet moment, he does nothing but watch the wispy white cotton curtains fluttering against the breeze seeping in from the cracked window, his mind blissfully numb and empty. But then there’s the sound of the bedroom door grazing the hardwood as it opens, and Arthur glances over just in time to see Eames poke his head through.

“Oh darling,” Eames says gently, stepping fully into the room and hurrying over to his side, “of course in the five minutes I leave to make tea you decide to come round. How’re you feeling?”

Arthur considers. It takes a moment for his brain to calibrate sensation to the rest of his body enough to even register how he’s feeling.

“Sore,” he admits quietly, “but otherwise, I think I’m okay.”

Eames brushes a few strands of hair away from Arthur’s forehead, and they feel crusted and dry with old hair gel.

“Sorry we’re at mine instead of yours,” Eames takes Arthur’s hand and places himself gently on the side of the bed, careful not to touch or tussle his foot. “You’d fainted and then the doctors put you under because they had to do surgery to get the glass out of your foot, and they said you’d be out for several hours but I didn’t want you waking up at hospital, but I also didn’t want to carry you up any amount of stairs… you may be very much on the leaner side, love, but I still don’t do enough weight training to lift you for _that_ long…”

Eames is rambling, which Arthur knows means that Mal’s dead. He didn’t get her up the stairs in time. He failed her.

He closes his eyes and focuses on breathing – _in and out and in again –_ to keep himself from hyperventilating. Eames must notice, because he trails off into a silence that feels like it’s filling the room like a noxious gas.

Once Arthur’s calmed back down enough to think clearly (or as clearly as he can through the haze of heavy-duty painkillers), he moves his fingers against the sheets until he finds Eames’s hand, taking hold of it.

“James and Phillipa?” he asks hoarsely.

“With their grandfather in Paris,” Eames answers tightly. “Dom’s in custody being questioned by police for neglect. As he should be.”

Arthur grits his teeth and feels tears stinging his eyes. “I didn’t get there in time. I didn’t save her. I should’ve-”

“Arthur.” Eames leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead before looking at him with hardened eyes. “A lot of things are unsure right now. A lot of things don’t make sense. But I can tell you this, without a show of a doubt, without a single ounce of uncertainty: it isn’t your fault. I _promise_ you this. And I know you probably don’t trust me very much right now, for a lot of reasons, but I would never lie to you about this. For the first few hours after it all happened, I blamed myself as well, but then I realized that if anyone’s at fault, it’s bloody Dom. We all tried. We all worried. He did nothing. He watched her waste away. I hope he rots in prison.”

Eames clenches his fist and Arthur notices, then, that his knuckles are covered in yellowing bruises. He wonders if the punch he saw was the only one Eames got on Dom. He sighs gently, reaching up to trace the lines of Eames’s face with his fingertips.

“Phillipa and James need at least one parent,” he says quietly. “We shouldn’t wish for that.”

Eames’s frown deepens against Arthur’s touch.

“You’re a much better person than me, gorgeous. That I know for certain as well.”

Arthur wants to ask him about Fischer and London and the contract, but he can’t bring himself to. Whatever energy he’d gathered since being awake vanishes at the mere thought of it, and instead he finds himself closing his eyes and slipping away back to that place where everything’s kind of not that terrible. Eames doesn’t fight to keep him awake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The funeral is held on a Tuesday. Dom gets released from custody just that morning with the promise of a murder trial looming off in the distance. Supposedly the police believe that the circumstances surrounding Mal’s death, after questioning practically everyone at the restaurant that night, were more suspicious than they originally believed. Arthur knows that Cobb’s too careless to murder his wife. Murder takes passion. What Cobb did wasn’t physical, it was mental: he infected her mind.

Dom stands across from them over the hole in the ground as they lower the coffin into it, and he looks at no one. His two small children flank him on either side, Phillipa looking beyond distraught, James focused absently on a butterfly fluttering above his head. Arthur keeps a firm grip on Eames’s arm, preventing him from doing anything rash like diving over the open grave and trying to push Cobb into it. He suddenly considers the cast on his left foot and the crutches an asset in preventing a scene.

Eames won’t leave his side, but it doesn’t stop him from cutting into Cobb violently with his eyes. Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever seen that look in Eames’s eyes before, and he isn’t sure he wants to ever again.

Above, the skies look angry, like they want to burst forth in one of their powerful spring rainstorms to wash away all the muck and dirt, but they’re holding it back because a woman like Mal deserves to be buried in smooth soil, not mud. Eames had confessed the previous night that he wished he’d stolen her remains to get them cremated and spread across the countryside, because of course Cobb would never do that for her. Even in death, Mal’s feelings are an afterthought to him, it seems.

They skip the reception. Eames spends the next week with Arthur, yet distant. Galaxies away. Arthur catches him more than once sitting on the windowsill in his living room and staring out at the rain, his mind everywhere but present. They do a lot of existing together, but not much else. He doesn’t go back to his apartment, however. No matter how little he and Eames communicate, Arthur makes himself readily available to him. Despite the hurt feelings between them still, the stiff silences and avoided glances, he knows what Eames did for him in California. He knows he would do anything to reciprocate.

It’s Ariadne’s idea to invite herself and Yusuf over to Eames’s to open a bottle of tequila Yusuf’s hoarded for years from his graduation trip to Guadalajara. Arthur forgoes his prescribed four ibuprofens that evening in lieu of tossing back thick, fiery swigs of rich, biting alcohol. It feels, finally, like the confusing blur of days that made up the last two weeks of his life are finally settling down into some semblance of calm, even though so many things are still left uncertain. He still hasn’t been able to find it in himself to ask Eames about Fischer and Lonodn. Eames has been like a live wire that’s just flickering with energy but hasn’t quite ignited yet. Arthur can sense the grief and the guilt in him but, much to his anguish, he hasn’t been able to be there for Eames like Eames was there for him in California. Part of it, he knows, is the unsaid things hanging suspended in the air between them, making things tense and uncomfortable.

The rest of it is just the rawness of it all. The suddenness of Mal’s death almost doesn’t feel entirely real… Arthur still wakes up some mornings thinking of how they can save her. Sometimes it isn’t until he sees the pain behind Eames’s eyes that he remembers it’s too late.

Eames is, sometimes, too much the same to be normal. Arthur knows he’s holding things in, deep in denial, keeping all of his grief to himself. He’s also restless, always moving or fidgeting or staring out the window like all he wants to do is pick a direction and one. Arthur feels helpless.

“You two need to talk,” Ariadne mutters as she corners Arthur in the kitchen when he goes to go and grab a pitcher of water for everybody, having downgraded to a single crutch because it isn’t a great distance and he needed a free hand.

“I know,” Arthur responds, because he does. He just doesn’t know _how_.

“Neither of you can start to heal until you talk about it. He’s like a caged animal, Arthur. He needs you.”

Arthur sighs and closes the fridge door, turning to face her with the pitcher in hand.

“Tonight,” he promises her. “I’ll talk to him _tonight_.” It’s as much a commitment to himself as it is to her. He’s been putting it off and putting it off, but now that Mal’s in the ground, it feels like they both need some certainty to cling to.

“Right, well.” A small smile appears on Ariadne’s face. “I’m going to take Yusuf out for a drink. You can get on that whole talking thing, like, _now_.”

Arthur can’t resist chuckling and pressing a kiss to her cheek in passing before he hobbles back out into the living room. Eames rises to his feet the moment he sees him, grabbing the pitcher from him and helping him sit back on the couch.

“I’m okay, Eames,” Arthur says quietly, letting his hand linger a bit too long at Eames’s elbow. Eames’s eyes soften a bit.

“Brilliant,” he responds just as quietly.

Arthur sees Ariadne whisper something in Yusuf’s ear and the way he lights up and grins in response, standing bolt upright and tugging her up as well.

“Thanks for having us,” Yusuf says as he fetches Ariadne’s coat from the coatrack, helping her into it, “but I think we’re gonna head out.”

Eames eyes them both with a glimmer of amusement before he moves to pull both of them into a tight hug, pressing a loud kiss into Ariadne’s hair and patting Yusuf’s back ceremoniously.

“Pleasure seeing you both,” he says.

“Have fun,” Arthur calls over from the couch. Yusuf salutes him.

 

 

 

Once they’re gone, Eames starts shuffling around the room, clearing glasses, folding the throw blanket, and tossing cushions back into place. Arthur stays silent, letting Eames get comfortable with the state of cleanliness, scrolling aimlessly through his Facebook feed.

“Shall I order some supper?” Eames asks when he reenters from the kitchen, wiping his hands with a rag. Eames hasn’t cooked a single thing since that night, but Arthur hasn’t attempted to mention anything about it.

“Sure,” Arthur says agreeably, stretching his arms behind his head. Eames nods and disappears back into the kitchen to fetch the menus and the phone. Twenty minutes later and Arthur convinces Eames that they should order from Eames’s favorite Vietnamese place. Eames fetches a couple of beers, which Arthur doesn’t mind at all due to the tequila still warming him and the fact that the thought of smelling wine makes him want to vomit still. He isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to smell wine again thinking of the smell of it mixed with the thick, iron stench of blood.

Arthur watches as Eames leans back and takes a deep swig of beer, the tightness of his shoulders giving away how upset he is, how much he’s holding back. Mal’s gone now, though. Arthur knows it’s time to start moving forward.

“Eames,” he says quietly, “I’m ready to talk about everything. If you’re ready to.”

There’s a beat of silence while Eames just stares at him, as if he can’t believe he’s actually hearing this. As if he can’t believe he’d ever get the chance to explain.

“Oh Arthur,” he says, strangled, scooting closer to him on the couch. “You have to know… you _must_ know that I never meant to _lie_ to you. I never meant to keep things from you. And I know intention is not an excuse… I _did_ lie to you. I _did_ keep something from you. And for that… I’m so, _so_ sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t.”

Arthur takes Eames’s hand and holds it in both of his, frowning and shaking his head.

“Of course you deserve forgiveness. And all I want is to give it to you. Just… please, I need an explanation.” He hopes he doesn’t sound pathetic, like he’s begging. He just wants Eames to know he isn’t angry anymore. He’s too _tired_ to be angry.

Eames melts a bit at Arthur’s words and looks down anxiously at their clasped hands, nodding. “Right, so… before you started working at Limbo, there was kind of an awkward period where we went through several really horrible somms who didn’t really know what they were doing at all. The restaurant was suffering, the food was suffering, and I just felt kind of hopeless, clouded by Mal’s illness and Dom’s obsessiveness. I wanted out. So I took a brief vacation home to London to visit my family and sort my life out a bit, when I get a phone call from Robert. We met up for drinks and I went back to his suite and we slept together and it was just… it was _comfort_. It was something I knew and kind of missed.”

Arthur nods, squeezing his hand. Eames sighs and continues.

“I spent the next two weeks in bed with him, hearing all about his fabulous new restaurant which was going to be in need of a chef within the next year. He really sold it by not even offering it… he has a funny way of doing that. By the end, when he asked me, I said yes. Of course I did. I was miserable. I wanted something new. I signed a contract but it almost didn’t feel completely real… it felt like pillow talk and nothing more. Something done in the heat of the moment. And then I came back to Bordeaux with the intention of telling Dom to get stuffed and easing myself away from Mal over the next year until my contract ended, but then when I got back, you were there.

“You didn’t see me that first few weeks. I hid in the kitchen like a lovesick schoolboy, watching you from afar… the way you held yourself, the way you slid your hand back over your hair when you spoke to Dom… one time I even got a glimpse of those dimples of yours and I knew I was a done man.”

Arthur feels the heat rising in his cheeks and can’t stop his dimples from forming at the mention of it.

“Did you break it off with Robert, then?”

“Not right then. We hadn’t even met yet, you and I. But then I finally scrounged up the courage to go and introduce myself, and then our dinners started… and for so long I was positive that what I felt for you was completely unrequited.”

Arthur sighs gently. “I was oblivious. To your feelings as well as my own.”

Eames smiles a bit. “Yes, quite, because I wasn’t subtle at _all_.”

Arthur laughs, leaning in to press a kiss to Eames’s shoulder. When he pulls back, Eames’s eyes are crinkling in the way that means he’s happy. Arthur hasn’t seen that crinkle in a while.

“So, the contract,” Arthur purses his lips, “what happened with that?”

“Well, technically, it still existed. But ever since you became the biggest part of not only my immediate life but also my _future_ , I’ve been working on getting it settled and gone. My father has a lot of powerful lawyer friends, barristers, who’ve been making inquiries and putting pressure on Robert and his father’s company to let me drop the contract, but they’ve been fighting back. I genuinely thought Robert came here for the right reasons… for Mal. But as it turns out, he came here to use me.” Eames deflates a bit as he speaks. Arthur’s blood boils.

“So it’s true. He came here to manipulate you and sabotage Limbo from getting the third star.”

“Yes, absolutely. But I _promise_ you, Arthur, I wasn’t a part of it like Saito claimed. I confronted Robert while you were in surgery. It came out that all he wanted was for us to not get the third star so I would be more tempted to give up fighting and come work for him at Catharsis. He was alarmed by what Mal said to him over the phone, but like Saito said, his ticket had been booked for a while.”

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Arthur growls, and Eames responds by running a soothing hand down his thigh.

“It’s okay, love. I finally got out of the contract. He gave in after everything… I just… I wish it didn’t come with such a price. I wish I didn’t have to lose her in the process.” His voice cracks, the pain that’s been swimming idly behind his eyes for the last six days finally breaking through to the surface, wetting his eyes and crumpling his features. Arthur’s heart breaks right then and there.

He pulls Eames into him, feeling the sobs building in Eames’s chest like a battering ram. Eames goes willingly, falling into Arthur, curling his fingers into his t-shirt.

“I forgive you,” he whispers in Eames’s ear. “Eames, I forgive you.”

And then the floodgates go down and Eames lets out several shattered, wrecked sobs into Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur can do nothing but cling to him like the world is falling apart. For a few long moments, everything is still. Arthur rubs a soothing figure-eight into Eames’s back, guiding his palm along each of his shoulder blades. Soon, his violent shuddering dissipates into a tremor.

“I can’t stay here,” Eames says, his voice sounding utterly wrecked. “I just… I can’t, Arthur. This city… it’s hers. It’ll always be hers.”

Arthur considers. Miles is closing and selling Limbo, for obvious reasons. The one thing that was tethering them there, to Bordeaux, is gone. And sure, Eames has his herb garden, and his fancy collection of knives, and his local butcher whom he’s chummy with who gives him all the best deals, but he also has Arthur.

_He has Arthur_. So much of their relationship so far has been blighted by tragedy. And so much of their general time coexisting with each other was spent with Arthur obliviously dancing pirouettes around his most obvious, most primal of emotions. He didn’t know about Eames’s pining before. He didn’t know about all of Eames’s troubles, and for all intents and purposes, because of it, he knows that Eames has gotten the short end of the stick this entire time, whether or not Eames would ever admit to it. Because for some reason, despite it all, Eames still looks at Arthur like a man seeing the sun for the first time. He’s given and given and given to Arthur, and Arthur will never take it for granted again. He knows it’s time for him to take the wheel, to carry Eames through this.

Eames has Arthur. And Arthur still has Eames. And that has to count for _something_.

“Then let’s go,” Arthur responds easily, because it _is_ easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

“Where?” Eames looks up at him, his eyes a bit swollen and searching. Arthur aches for him, wanting from some deep place inside of him to protect him from the helplessness he’s feeling and lift him up into the light. He cups Eames’s face and smiles.

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Where ever you want. Let’s just _go_.”

Eames blinks one, twice, before reaching up and placing his hands over Arthur’s, his callouses brushing against Arthur’s knuckles.

“Are you sure?” he asks carefully, his eyes wide.

Arthur smiles, moving his hands away from Eames’s face and sliding them down his shoulders. “We’ve both seen a lot of the world, Mr. Eames. But we haven’t seen all of it. Just _think_ of all the cities we haven’t had sex in yet… shame, really…”

Eames gapes at him for a beat before a grin spreads across his face.

“Oh Arthur, _Arthur_ , I-”

“I love you,” Arthur says simply, because it _is_ simple. It’s the simplest thing in the world. “Let’s just… leave all this behind and start a new chapter.”

Eames pulls Arthur in for a kiss that lingers, a kiss that touches Arthur in his core.

“I love you, Arthur Cohen,” Eames whispers against his lips, leaning him back against the couch cushions. “And I will follow you to the ends of the earth, like a man possessed, for the rest of my natural life. I can promise you that. No more secrets. No more lies.”

Arthur smiles and finds his lips again with his own, not letting himself get _too_ lost because he knows the delivery man will be arriving soon, and they have a bad tendency for starting what they can’t finish due to a knock at the door.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Even a week after arriving in California, adjusting from the eleven hour time difference after exploring Nairobi for ten days is proving to be a struggle for Arthur. He barely finds the energy to peel himself out of bed in the mornings (which he likely couldn’t if Eames – somehow immune to jetlag after their months of restless adventure – wasn’t there to force him up), let alone do all the duties he’s been given by his sister for the wedding. Serving as his sister’s point man when it comes to planning and organizing isn’t as easy of a task as he thought it would be when he agreed to all of it.

The night before, he gets three hours of sleep and rearranges the dinner seating chart about sixty-five times (because he obviously is a better judge than his sister or mother of which relatives would get along, and which relatives should be seated as near to the back as physically possible). Eames wakes up at random intervals and rolls over to glance at Arthur’s laptop with tired eyes and make half-hearted attempts at distracting him enough to close it. It doesn’t work, and by morning Arthur is running off of nothing but raw adrenaline.

And, like the true Californian he is, copious amounts of Starbucks, but that’s neither here nor there.

 

 

 

And it goes, oddly, without a hitch. He manages to wrangle the guests, track down the AWOL pianist who was engaged in _too_ deep a conversation with his cousin Tony, and be back in time to walk his little sister down the aisle. He has to remind himself to glance over at her, to see her in her gown, and once he does he allows himself to be caught up in the moment, just this once.

“Dad would have loved to do this,” he whispers in her ear as they walk slowly in time to the music, “but I’m glad I can be here for him.”

Her smile and the tears welling in her eyes are enough to make him dizzy with emotion. Once he delivers her to Chen, who has tears rolling steadily down his face just at the sight of her, he takes his place in the front row between his mother and Eames, where he spends the rest of the ceremony hyper-aware of Eames’s hand tucked behind Arthur’s folded elbow, two fingers curled loosely into the crease of his suit.

And then it’s over, and his sister is married, and all that’s left is drinking too much champagne (the real stuff, he made sure of it) and dancing like an idiot. The reception planning fell entirely to Chen’s sister, who meticulously decorated their backyard overlooking the vineyards to look like something out of a fantasy novel, with lights twinkling from seemingly impossible places and lanterns a casting warm, colorful glow hanging overhead.

Dinner consists of an assortment of beautiful, colorful Sichuan-inspired dishes, and Eames is happy to pass on his compliments to the chef, his lips stained a bit orange from the spices.

After the cake is cut and the speeches given, Beth finds Arthur during a particularly catchy song that even Eames can’t resist getting up and dancing to. Sitting down beside him, she glances out at the dance floor and smiles.

“Tonight was pretty great,” Arthur comments, glancing over at her and mirroring her smile.

“Yeah,” she sighs, obviously happy. “I wish Dad was here. He would have loved this.”

“He would have.” Arthur tips his chair back a bit and takes a long, thoughtful sip of the flute of champagne he almost forgot he was holding. “Especially the hors d’oeuvres.”

Beth laughs in a way that bubbles in his chest like the champagne. For a moment there’s silence between them; nothing but a happy buzz and the pop music blaring over the loudspeakers. Then, Beth crosses her arms and leans forward, her lips pursed, and Arthur knows he’s about to either be told off of propositioned. He prepares himself for both possibilities.

“So,” she starts, “Dad left the vineyard to both of us, you know. And Mom doesn’t want to run it by herself. Chen thinks it could be a really good investment to get everything going again. The vines are starting to look a little neglected, but Mom seems to think it isn’t too late to get them into a decent shape again in time for harvest.” She stops to take a deep breath, her eyes glued on Arthur. “And I guess what I’m trying to say is… how would you feel about helping? I _know_ growing grapes isn’t exactly your dream future… but it’d just be a little while. Until we were on our feet. And you can absolutely say no, because you probably have some fancy somm job lined up somewhere, but… just… consider. Please.”

Arthur’s knee-jerk instinct is to tell his sister that he appreciates her offer but he could _never_ resort to that… but then he happens to glance out over the vineyard again; the rows and rows of grape vines that look much droopier, much more dusty brown than he ever remembers them as a kid. They’re the same vines he used to play in and run through as a child. They’re the same vines his _dad_ used to play in as a child. They’re the vines his dad fought tooth and nail year after year to keep alive. They’re the vines that were his dad’s greatest pride in life, the vines Arthur used to be jealous of, the vines that are, in some ways, the last thing Arthur really has of his dad. The thought of them shriveling up and dying almost feels like losing him all over again.

He pauses, eyes fixed on the rows of dying vines that need his help, before glancing back up to find Beth watching him with close eyes. He sighs.

“I’ll talk to Eames,” Arthur says, reaching over and taking her hand. “I’ll let you know soon, okay? Try not to think about it too much. Focus on your honeymoon.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” she says with a gleam in her eye, and Arthur can’t help but grin at the thought of his baby sister traversing the crowded streets of Ibiza and getting sunburnt on the beach. “But yes, talk to Eames,” she says with a grin.

He pecks her cheek when he sees Chen head over after dancing with his mother, his cheeks pleasantly flushed, looking at Beth like she’s the only thing in the universe.

_As it should be_ , he thinks, allowing her _husband_ to sweep her away for another dance. Eames eventually finds his way back over to him, bright eyed and rosy cheeked as well, and Arthur finds the words caught in his throat about moving to California, not wanting to see the smile on Eames’s face disappear for any reason (because he doesn’t know if the prospect of moving to California is enough to cause it to). Instead, Arthur kisses him, because sometimes it’s the only thing that really makes sense for him to do.

Arthur feels Eames tuck his hand just under the back of Arthur’s waistcoat and tug him closer into the kiss before pulling back and grinning.

“Alright?” he says brightly, his eyes a bit foggy from all the champagne. It’s the first time since Mal died that alcohol hasn’t put Eames into a melancholy sulk.

“More than alright,” Arthur says through a happy sigh, trying not to seem too wistful. Eames just pulls him closer.

 

 

 

The night slows to a crawl and Arthur finds himself in the middle of a deserted dance floor, Eames’s arms wrapped around his waist loosely as they sway back and forth to a slow track that the DJ’s left on as he chats up one of Arthur’s second cousins. His sister left a little while ago, off in a limo with cans bouncing off the bumper and rice in her hair, and her departure seemed to trigger most of the other guests leaving as well. His mother left moment before after staining their cheeks with excessive wine-soaked kisses, yawning so hard she could barely stand straight. 

There’s a huge mess to clean, and several people lingering at various tables, but Arthur doesn’t mind. Because his favorite part of any night – every night – is when life slows down enough for him to notice things like just how _blue_ Eames’s eyes are when the lights shining against them are white in hue.

Eames leans back slightly and eyes Arthur, eyebrows a bit furrowed.

“Right, out with it, then,” he says, tugging his hand back to thumb at Arthur’s hipbone over his dress pants.

Arthur frowns. “Out with what?”

“Whatever it is that’s been on your mind all evening that’s been causing you to stare forlornly out over the vineyards…”

Arthur sighs, reprimanding himself for forgetting how horrible he is at keeping things on his mind from spreading to his face. He’s a horrible liar, but he doesn’t even have to speak words to be caught in it.

“Fine.” Arthur’s lips purse involuntarily. “But I was going to wait until later tonight.”

The aloof smile on Eames’s face fades ever so slightly. “What, it isn’t bad, is it?”

“No,” Arthur says quickly. “No… I mean, I don’t think so. It’s just a proposition. You can say no. You can _definitely_ say no. It’s just…” He pauses, eyes darting down to where his wingtip-clad feet are brushing aimlessly against Eames’s oxfords (that he picked out because _no, Eames, monk straps don’t go with the cut of your suit_ ). He must spend a second too long contemplating his decision on Eames’s shoes because Eames ducks a bit to meet his eye line.

“Well?”

“Well.” Arthur tilts his head back and looks up at the starry sky above. “My sister wants help getting the vineyard back up and running. She and Chen want to make a full-time business out of it, but she wants me here helping her, because in his will, my dad left it for my mother and the both of us. And it wouldn’t be permanent, because I want my sister to have the business, not me. But she has no experience and my mother is such a guru when it comes to growing and harvesting but she doesn’t know about the business side of it at all… I just... I know it’s a big thing to consider and we _don’t_ have to make this decision tonight. The last few months have been so good for us and so _spectacular_ and if you don’t want it to get put on pause, I’d understand…”

Eames stops him by sliding his hands up both of his arms to cup his face, putting both of his thumbs over his lips to prevent him from talking.

“Arthur, breathe,” he says, eyes ridiculously soft. “I’d sort of figured this was what had gotten you in a strop. Chen and Beth cornered me yesterday when you were off threatening the flower arrangers or whatever and brought it up to me. I’ve had over twenty-four hours to think it over.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, because _of course_ his sister has already gotten to Eames. She’s always been the smart, if not devious, one.

“And what have you decided?” Arthur asks.

Eames brushes his nose against Arthur’s. “I’ve decided that living with you in California will be as much of an adventure as traveling the world could ever be. It doesn’t have to be permanent, like you said, but it’s something akin to putting down anchors with you and settling down… and darling, that’s the adventure I want most.”

And Arthur smiles, because in that moment, smiling’s the only thing he can think to do that isn’t cry or dance like an idiot or scream happily up into the summer sky because Eames is _his_ and he can feel life throbbing and buzzing in his fingertips. He feels like he used to when he was a kid, driving down dark highways and sprinting into the ocean with reckless abandon and a keen sense of invincibility.

And he smiles because _he’s worked hard for this_ ; this happiness. He’s worked hard for _Eames_ , and the future they might just get after all.

Eames plants a thumb in each of Arthur’s dimples and smiles too, and for a moment they just smile at each other because that’s what people who are in love _do_ , Arthur thinks. They smile like absolute idiots at each other and happily forget the rest.

“Right,” Eames says, leaning in to brush his nose against Arthur’s, “I think all of that gorgeous tea-smoked duck I consumed earlier has officially worn off. I’m fucking starving.”

“If we’re quiet, I could probably make you a grilled cheese,” Arthur offers, turning his head to bite gently at the end of Eames’s thumb. “But if we wake up my mom, we’re done for.”

Eames chuckles.

“Depends on how quiet the grilled cheese chef can be while I _very purposefully_ don’t keep my hands off of him.”

Arthur lifts a brow. “Are you sure you’re hungry for _food_ , Mr. Eames?”

Eames’s hands find Arthur’s hips again and pull him closer. “Well, now that you mention it…”

Around them, the catering staff are starting to fold chairs and the DJ finally closes his laptop and packs up, and the sound of tired laughter and muttered gossip fills up the yard in lieu of the music. Arthur hears none of it though, fingers gripping at Eames’s belt loops as he tugs him back inside of the house, already imagining the taste of melted brie and gruyère on Eames’s crumb-covered lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue coming this weekend.


	10. Epilogue

Three years later

 

                                                                              

 

Arthur feels his phone buzz in his pocket, but considering he’s just sat down with a room full of potential investors for Paradosso Wines (fancy Wall Street types with ten thousand dollar suits and a smug set to their mouths), he doesn’t look at it.

It sits heavy in his pocket for the next two hours of swindling and schmoozing, because Arthur _knows_ it’s a text from Eames, who’s been away in Europe for the past four weeks touring various chef schools, giving lessons and talking to students and doing other various press-related events because even though Arthur often forgets it, Eames is still _technically_ a bit of a celebrity (though, as Eames has put it, he’s more famous in a ‘ _your nan will want me to make her a cheese toastie’_ sort of way.)

Finally, when he’s able to escape the meeting with a few hefty checks in his wallet and a sore wrist from shaking so many hands, he pulls out his phone and sees that the text isn’t in fact a text, but an email.

It’s from Eames, and there’s nothing in it but a link to a plane ticket.

Arthur calls him immediately.

“Ah, there you are,” Eames sighs when he answers, his voice hoarse from sleep. Arthur’s failed to remember that Eames is functioning on a nine hour time difference, making it the middle of the night for him. “I was getting worried about you. How was your meeting?”

“Eames,” Arthur says pointedly, holding his phone between his ear and shoulder as he wrestles to get his car keys out of his pocket. “Why did you email me a plane ticket to Geneva for _tomorrow_?”

“Well, you see,” Eames clears his throat and Arthur can hear him shuffling his phone to the opposite ear and sit up in bed, “I _know_ you think I’m too impulsive. And yeah, well, I am. But the truth of the matter is that I _miss you_ and you’ve been working so bloody hard lately, I just thought it would be nice if you took a long weekend and flew out. You said once that you wanted to see the Alps in the summertime.”

Arthur stands in the parking lot of the investment firm with his car door and mouth agape.

On one hand, Arthur’s _actually_ in his thirties now, which means he’s officially and irrevocably an adult, and adults don’t just up and get on a plane with a day’s notice. Especially not when they have as many responsibilities as Arthur does. He, Beth, and Chen (with lots of help and support from his mother and Eames) have struggled and wrestled the wine business back off the ground, going as far as nursing the vines back to health and picking the grapes themselves. It’s not what he _wants_ to do with his life, but it hasn’t been as bad as he imagined it to be.

On the other hand, Eames has never been the best influence on Arthur when it comes to adulting.

“You’re ridiculous,” Arthur responds, because that’s their private code for Arthur saying yes to one of Eames’s crazy ideas. Arthur can almost _hear_ Eames’s grin.

“Right, see you tomorrow evening, then? It’s two in the AM here, love, I’m knackered.”

“Get some sleep,” Arthur says as he finally makes it into his car, closing the door. “I’ll call you before I leave.”

“There’s a lad,” Eames mumbles fondly, already half-asleep, and Arthur just chuckles and hangs up.

 

 

 

 

“He’s going to _propose_!!!” Beth squeals when he finds her to tell her of what’s happening, launching herself over two vines and knocking into Arthur so hard he nearly falls back into a pile of fertilizer.

Arthur looks down at all the dirt she’s left on his suit after working out in the vineyard all day and rolls his eyes, not even bothering to brush it off.

“Right,” he says dryly. “I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s going to do.”

Beth looks indignant. “Why else would he fly you half way across the world on such a whim?”

“Because he’s impulsive as hell and a hopeless romantic.”

“That only proves my point, idiot.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Arthur says, because he really doesn’t. His flight’s at six the next morning and he needs to pack and square things away for the duration of his absence.

 

 

 

 

After two flights and a six hour layover in London, Arthur finds himself in the passenger seat of some expensive rental car with a leather interior and paneled sunroof – which Eames insists he had no choice in picking. Eames speeds happily along the highway through the valley they’d been to before, his right hand placed firmly on Arthur’s thigh, their fingers laced together loosely. Arthur’s exhausted from the flight and his head is buzzing a bit from yet another change in altitude, but he’s with Eames, so it’s okay. It’s all okay.

Soon, they round a wide corner, and Arthur’s met with the most green he’s ever seen in his life. He wasn’t even aware, before _this_ moment, how this much green could even exist.

He turns to Eames only to find him watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“What’d you think?” he asks. Arthur just gapes.

“This place… can’t even be real,” Arthur mutters, looking back out the window, blinking for good measure just in case his eyes really _are_ deceiving him. The intricate patterns of grapevine rows he was so amazed by years ago in the wintertime, covered in snow, are now etched into the sides of the mountains like something molded out of a fairytale. He can even make out people rappelling down to tend to them.

“It’s nice, innit?” Eames says distractedly, eyes fixed on the road now.

It isn’t until Eames drives them straight past the small, charming town they were supposed to stay in the last time they were here that Arthur gets suspicious.

“Where are we going?”

Eames smiles nervously, which isn’t like him _at all_.

“Patience, gorgeous.”

He lifts Arthur’s hand to his lips and leaves it there for a moment, and Arthur can’t bring himself to worry.

 

 

Half an hour later, they’re deep in the valley with jagged, snowy peaks jutting out of the earth all around them, making Arthur feel like he’s in some sort of Tolkien novel. There’s barely any civilization around, just the occasional turn-off for a mountain town or resort. Eventually, Eames turns off from the highway, and they follow a dirt road back into another valley that splits off from the main one, carved out by what appears to be a charming babbling brook that follows alongside the road. Maybe, Arthur thinks, Eames has found some incredibly charming off-the-grid bed and breakfast. He wouldn’t mind being completely unreachable by civilization for a few days. He wouldn’t mind not leaving the bed for a few days, either, but that’s neither here nor there.

Eames pulls off onto _another_ dirt road and slows to a stop, the gravel crunching loudly under the tires. He turns to Arthur, his eyes bright and his fingers bouncing anxiously against the steering wheel.

“Right, so… I want you to know this is just an _idea_. Not a done deal, not a contract, but an _idea_.”

Eames turns off the car and exits it, and Arthur watches as he walks around and opens the passenger door and holds out a hand for him. Arthur removes his seatbelt and takes Eames’s hand, stepping out of the car and taking a deep, delicious breath of crystal-clean mountain air.

“Okay?” Arthur says in response, because he isn’t sure what else to say. His mind is entirely blank and void of any sort of understanding of what is happening.

“And this isn’t some con job,” Eames continues, tucking Arthur’s arm within his own after he shuts the car door, walking forward with him. “I’m not _planting_ this idea in your head like Cobb did with Mal. I’m offering this idea to you as a _possibility_ for the future. Our future. If you want it.”

Arthur opens his mouth to speak, because _of course I want our future, you nitwit, what the fuck are you going on about?_ , but he abruptly stops because in front of them, sitting neatly beside the creek and under a veil of trees, is what looks to be a restaurant. Or, what was once a restaurant _ages_ ago.

The wood exterior is splintered badly and the paint is peeling, but there’s an assortment of colorful flowers spilling over from each window box, meaning someone’s been at least taking minimal care of it. Out over the creek beside it sits a big waterwheel which is still turning, causing the gentle sound of water brushing against old, rotting wood.

It’s… utterly charming. A definite fixer-upper, for sure, but there’s something about the sloped roof and the floor-to-ceiling veranda windows that calls to him.

“It was built in the twenties and used to be a sort of bed and breakfast for locals,” Eames says from behind him apprehensively, and it’s only then that Arthur’s realizes that he’s stepped forward unconsciously, trying to take in the smell of old wood, mildew and marigolds. “An old couple owns it and they’re trying to sell it so they can move into Geneva and retire. I saw an ad listing on the train a couple weeks ago and thought I’d come and check it out. I know it’s spontaneous and I know you _hate_ spontaneous…”

Arthur steps further away from Eames, edging around the perimeter of the restaurant. Once he’s on the other side, a beautiful old house comes into view, tucked up against the foothills. It, too, could use a bit of work, but there’s smoke coming from the old cobblestone chimney and flowers spilling from each window of it as well.

“That’s their house, it’s for sale as well,” Eames supplies once he catches up.

For a moment Arthur’s silent. He listens to the sound of the rushing water and creaking wood and breathes in the mountain air. Eames’s hand appears at the small of his back.

“Does it have a cellar?” Arthur asks quietly. He glances back to see Eames smile.

“A big one. With lots of old vintages already there. And lots of space for a new collection. It’s all for sale, darling. Every inch of it.”

Arthur hums, lifting his hand to scrape over his smooth chin, just for dramatic effect, because he can feel Eames’s eyes glued to him.

“Eames,” Arthur says warmly, gears turning in his head, “you’re a madman.”

Eames’s arms slide around Arthur’s waist to pull him back against him, as he plants a kiss on his neck.

“I know I’m a madman,” Eames breathes with reverence and a warm chuckle, “but like I said, it’s just an _idea_ …”

Arthur imagines dusks with rolled up sleeves, paint-smeared cheeks and too-full glasses of wine out on the lovely balcony he spies at the cottage. He imagines an herb garden stretching back onto the grassy hill behind. He imagines baskets full of mushrooms picked in the woods on either side. He imagines Eames with deepening wrinkles around his eyes from smiling too much, hair greying, smile happy. He imagines people traveling for miles and _miles_ to experience what he and Eames create, bare-handed and from the ground, _together_.

“Tell me more about this cellar,” he says, grabbing Eames’s hand and tugging him back toward the restaurant, feeling the sunshine work its way into his bones at the sound of Eames’s bright, happy laughter in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh... what can I even say? This has been such a wonderful journey, start to finish. When I started this fic, I expected it to be 10k _tops_. It was just supposed to be sort of a cute throw-away AU without much substance but then it turned into _this_... and that's because of all of you. Honestly. Your support and wonderful comments have given me the most wonderful fandom experience I've ever had. I've always known this fandom was incredible, but this just solidified it and really made me feel right at home. Thank you all for that. 
> 
> The biggest thank you, though, to my beta [Amy, ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb)who was not only the most excellent, insightful beta anyone could ever hope for, but truly helped shape the story and how it turned out. I couldn't have done it without her. 
> 
> Also, for the record, I'm going to miss this 'verse. I doubt this will be the last time you'll see it. I want to write some little sequel ficlets. If you have any requests, let me know in the comments or on my [tumblr.](http://www.ophiliad.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you! <3 
> 
> -Rachel (homesickblues, ophiliad)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't claim to know anything about what being a sommelier is really like. This is just based on what I've read and a documentary I watched, as well as a deep passion for wine myself. I have never worked in a Michelin star restaurant, so I have no idea if this is even close to how it functions. Forgive me for any mistakes!


End file.
